The Master of Ballantrae...................................................................................................................................1

Here is a tale which extends over many years and travels into many countries. By a peculiar fitness of

circumstance the writer began, continued it, and concluded it among distant and diverse scenes. Above all, he

was much upon the sea. The character and fortune of the fraternal enemies, the hall and shrubbery of

Durrisdeer, the problem of Mackellar's homespun and how to shape it for superior flights; these were his

company on deck in many starreflecting harbours, ran often in his mind at sea to the tune of slatting canvas,

and were dismissed (something of the suddenest) on the approach of squalls. It is my hope that these

surroundings of its manufacture may to some degree find favour for my story with seafarers and sealovers

And at least here is a dedication from a great way off: written by the loud shores of a subtropical island near

upon ten thousand miles from Boscombe Chine and Manor: scenes which rise before me as I write, along

Well, I am for the sea once more; no doubt Sir Percy also. Let us make the signal B. R. D.!

Although an old, consistent exile, the editor of the following pages revisits now and again the city of which

he exults to be a native; and there are few things more strange, more painful, or more salutary, than such

revisitations. Outside, in foreign spots, he comes by surprise and awakens more attention than he had

expected; in his own city, the relation is reversed, and he stands amazed to be so little recollected. Elsewhere

he is refreshed to see attractive faces, to remark possible friends; there he scouts the long streets, with a pang

at heart, for the faces and friends that are no more. Elsewhere he is delighted with the presence of what is

new, there tormented by the absence of what is old. Elsewhere he is content to be his present self; there he is

smitten with an equal regret for what he once was and for what he once hoped to be.

He was feeling all this dimly, as he drove from the station, on his last visit; he was feeling it still as he

alighted at the door of his friend Mr. Johnstone Thomson, W.S., with whom he was to stay. A hearty

welcome, a face not altogether changed, a few words that sounded of old days, a laugh provoked and shared,

a glimpse in passing of the snowy cloth and bright decanters and the Piranesis on the diningroom wall,

brought him to his bedroom with a somewhat lightened cheer, and when he and Mr. Thomson sat down a

few minutes later, cheek by jowl, and pledged the past in a preliminary bumper, he was already almost

consoled, he had already almost forgiven himself his two unpardonable errors, that he should ever have left

"I have something quite in your way," said Mr. Thomson. "I wished to do honour to your arrival; because, my

dear fellow, it is my own youth that comes back along with you; in a very tattered and withered state, to be

"A great deal better than nothing," said the editor. "But what is this which is quite in my way?"

"I was coming to that," said Mr. Thomson: "Fate has put it in my power to honour your arrival with

"Yes," said his friend, "a mystery. It may prove to be nothing, and it may prove to be a great deal. But in the

meanwhile it is truly mysterious, no eye having looked on it for near a hundred years; it is highly genteel, for

it treats of a titled family; and it ought to be melodramatic, for (according to the superscription) it is

"I think I rarely heard a more obscure or a more promising annunciation," the other remarked. "But what is

"I remember him acutely; he could not look at me without a pang of reprobation, and he could not feel the

pang without betraying it. He was to me a man of a great historical interest, but the interest was not returned."

"Ah well, we go beyond him," said Mr. Thomson. "I daresay old Peter knew as little about this as I do. You

see, I succeeded to a prodigious accumulation of old lawpapers and old tin boxes, some of them of Peter's

hoarding, some of his father's, John, first of the dynasty, a great man in his day. Among other collections,

"The Durrisdeers!" cried I. "My dear fellow, these may be of the greatest interest. One of them was out in the

'45; one had some strange passages with the devil you will find a note of it in Law's MEMORIALS, I think;

and there was an unexplained tragedy, I know not what, much later, about a hundred years ago "

"Yes, the lamentable deaths of my Lord Durrisdeer and his brother, the Master of Ballantrae (attainted in the

troubles)," said Mr. Thomson with something the tone of a man quoting. "Is that it?"

"To say truth," said I, "I have only seen some dim reference to the things in memoirs; and heard some

traditions dimmer still, through my uncle (whom I think you knew). My uncle lived when he was a boy in the

neighbourhood of St. Bride's; he has often told me of the avenue closed up and grown over with grass, the

great gates never opened, the last lord and his old maid sister who lived in the back parts of the house, a quiet,

plain, poor, humdrum couple it would seem but pathetic too, as the last of that stirring and brave house

"Yes," said Mr. Thomson. "Henry Graeme Durie, the last lord, died in 1820; his sister, the honourable Miss

Katherine Durie, in '27; so much I know; and by what I have been going over the last few days, they were

what you say, decent, quiet people and not rich. To say truth, it was a letter of my lord's that put me on the

search for the packet we are going to open this evening. Some papers could not be found; and he wrote to

Jack M'Brair suggesting they might be among those sealed up by a Mr. Mackellar. M'Brair answered, that the

papers in question were all in Mackellar's own hand, all (as the writer understood) of a purely narrative

character; and besides, said he, 'I am bound not to open them before the year 1889.' You may fancy if these

words struck me: I instituted a hunt through all the M'Brair repositories; and at last hit upon that packet which

In the smokingroom, to which my host now led me, was a packet, fastened with many seals and enclosed in

Papers relating to the lives and lamentable deaths of the late Lord Durisdeer, and his elder brother James,

commonly called Master of Ballantrae, attainted in the troubles: entrusted into the hands of John M'Brair in

the Lawnmarket of Edinburgh, W.S.; this 20th day of September Anno Domini 1789; by him to be kept

secret until the revolution of one hundred years complete, or until the 20th day of September 1889: the same

As Mr. Thomson is a married man, I will not say what hour had struck when we laid down the last of the

"Here," said Mr. Thomson, "is a novel ready to your hand: all you have to do is to work up the scenery,

"My dear fellow," said I, "they are just the three things that I would rather die than set my hand to. It shall be

"I believe there is nothing so noble as baldness," replied I, "and I am sure there in nothing so interesting. I

The full truth of this odd matter is what the world has long been looking for, and public curiosity is sure to

welcome. It so befell that I was intimately mingled with the last years and history of the house; and there does

not live one man so able as myself to make these matters plain, or so desirous to narrate them faithfully. I

knew the Master; on many secret steps of his career I have an authentic memoir in my hand; I sailed with him

on his last voyage almost alone; I made one upon that winter's journey of which so many tales have gone

abroad; and I was there at the man's death. As for my late Lord Durrisdeer, I served him and loved him near

twenty years; and thought more of him the more I knew of him. Altogether, I think it not fit that so much

evidence should perish; the truth is a debt I owe my lord's memory; and I think my old years will flow more

The Duries of Durrisdeer and Ballantrae were a strong family in the southwest from the days of David First.

bears the mark of its antiquity; and the name appears in another, which common report attributes to Thomas

of Ercildoune himself I cannot say how truly, and which some have applied I dare not say with how much

Twa Duries in Durrisdeer, Ane to tie and ane to ride, An ill day for the groom And a waur day for the bride.

Authentic history besides is filled with their exploits which (to our modern eyes) seem not very

commendable: and the family suffered its full share of those ups and downs to which the great houses of

Scotland have been ever liable. But all these I pass over, to come to that memorable year 1745, when the

At that time there dwelt a family of four persons in the house of Durrisdeer, near St. Bride's, on the Solway

shore; a chief hold of their race since the Reformation. My old lord, eighth of the name, was not old in years,

but he suffered prematurely from the disabilities of age; his place was at the chimney side; there he sat

reading, in a lined gown, with few words for any man, and wry words for none: the model of an old retired

housekeeper; and yet his mind very well nourished with study, and reputed in the country to be more cunning

than he seemed. The master of Ballantrae, James in baptism, took from his father the love of serious reading;

some of his tact perhaps as well, but that which was only policy in the father became black dissimulation in

the son. The face of his behaviour was merely popular and wild: he sat late at wine, later at the cards; had the

name in the country of "an unco man for the lasses;" and was ever in the front of broils. But for all he was the

first to go in, yet it was observed he was invariably the best to come off; and his partners in mischief were

usually alone to pay the piper. This luck or dexterity got him several illwishers, but with the rest of the

country, enhanced his reputation; so that great things were looked for in his future, when he should have

gained more gravity. One very black mark he had to his name; but the matter was hushed up at the time, and

so defaced by legends before I came into those parts, that I scruple to set it down. If it was true, it was a

horrid fact in one so young; and if false, it was a horrid calumny. I think it notable that he had always vaunted

himself quite implacable, and was taken at his word; so that he had the addition among his neighbours of "an

ill man to cross." Here was altogether a young nobleman (not yet twentyfour in the year '45) who had made

a figure in the country beyond his time of life. The less marvel if there were little heard of the second son,

Mr. Henry (my late Lord Durrisdeer), who was neither very bad nor yet very able, but an honest, solid sort of

lad like many of his neighbours. Little heard, I say; but indeed it was a case of little spoken. He was known

among the salmon fishers in the firth, for that was a sport that he assiduously followed; he was an excellent

good horsedoctor besides; and took a chief hand, almost from a boy, in the management of the estates. How

hard a part that was, in the situation of that family, none knows better than myself; nor yet with how little

colour of justice a man may there acquire the reputation of a tyrant and a miser. The fourth person in the

house was Miss Alison Graeme, a near kinswoman, an orphan, and the heir to a considerable fortune which

her father had acquired in trade. This money was loudly called for by my lord's necessities; indeed the land

was deeply mortgaged; and Miss Alison was designed accordingly to be the Master's wife, gladly enough on

her side; with how much goodwill on his, is another matter. She was a comely girl, and in those days very

spirited and selfwilled; for the old lord having no daughter of his own, and my lady being long dead, she

To these four came the news of Prince Charlie's landing, and set them presently by the ears. My lord, like the

chimneykeeper that he was, was all for temporising. Miss Alison held the other side, because it appeared

romantical; and the Master (though I have heard they did not agree often) was for this once of her opinion.

The adventure tempted him, as I conceive; he was tempted by the opportunity to raise the fortunes of the

house, and not less by the hope of paying off his private liabilities, which were heavy beyond all opinion. As

for Mr. Henry, it appears he said little enough at first; his part came later on. It took the three a whole day's

disputation, before they agreed to steer a middle course, one son going forth to strike a blow for King James,

my lord and the other staying at home to keep in favour with King George. Doubtless this was my lord's

decision; and, as is well known, it was the part played by many considerable families. But the one dispute

settled, another opened. For my lord, Miss Alison, and Mr. Henry all held the one view: that it was the cadet's

part to go out; and the Master, what with restlessness and vanity, would at no rate consent to stay at home.

My lord pleaded, Miss Alison wept, Mr. Henry was very plain spoken: all was of no avail.

"It is the direct heir of Durrisdeer that should ride by his King's bridle," says the Master.

"If we were playing a manly part," says Mr. Henry, "there might be sense in such talk. But what are we

"And see, James," said Mr. Henry, "if I go, and the Prince has the upper hand, it will be easy to make your

peace with King James. But if you go, and the expedition fails, we divide the right and the title. And what

"You will be Lord Durrisdeer," said the Master. "I put all I have upon the table."

"I play at no such game," cries Mr. Henry. "I shall be left in such a situation as no man of sense and honour

could endure. I shall be neither fish nor flesh!" he cried. And a little after he had another expression, plainer

perhaps than he intended. "It is your duty to be here with my father," said he. "You know well enough you

"Ay?" said the Master. "And there spoke Envy! Would you trip up my heels Jacob?" said he, and dwelled

Mr. Henry went and walked at the low end of the hall without reply; for he had an excellent gift of silence.

"I am the cadet and I SHOULD go," said he. "And my lord here in the master, and he says I SHALL go.

"I say this, Harry," returned the Master, "that when very obstinate folk are met, there are only two ways out:

Blows and I think none of us could care to go so far; or the arbitrament of chance and here is a guinea

The coin was spun, and it fell shield. "So there is a lesson for Jacob," says the Master.

As for Miss Alison, she caught up that piece of gold which had just sent her lover to the wars, and flung it

"'I could not love you, dear, so well, loved I not honour more,'" sang the Master.

"Oh!" she cried, "you have no heart I hope you may be killed!" and she ran from the room, and in tears, to

It seems the Master turned to my lord with his most comical manner, and says he, "This looks like a devil of a

"I think you are a devil of a son to me," cried his father, "you that have always been the favourite, to my

shame be it spoken. Never a good hour have I gotten of you, since you were born; no, never one good hour,"

and repeated it again the third time. Whether it was the Master's levity, or his insubordination, or Mr. Henry's

word about the favourite son, that had so much disturbed my lord, I do not know; but I incline to think it was

the last, for I have it by all accounts that Mr. Henry was more made up to from that hour.

Altogether it was in pretty ill blood with his family that the Master rode to the North; which was the more

sorrowful for others to remember when it seemed too late. By fear and favour he had scraped together near

upon a dozen men, principally tenants' sons; they were all pretty full when they set forth, and rode up the hill

by the old abbey, roaring and singing, the white cockade in every hat. It was a desperate venture for so small

a company to cross the most of Scotland unsupported; and (what made folk think so the more) even as that

poor dozen was clattering up the hill, a great ship of the king's navy, that could have brought them under with

a single boat, lay with her broad ensign streaming in the bay. The next afternoon, having given the Master a

fair start, it was Mr. Henry's turn; and he rode off, all by himself, to offer his sword and carry letters from his

father to King George's Government. Miss Alison was shut in her room, and did little but weep, till both were

gone; only she stitched the cockade upon the Master's hat, and (as John Paul told me) it was wetted with tears

In all that followed, Mr. Henry and my old lord were true to their bargain. That ever they accomplished

anything is more than I could learn; and that they were anyway strong on the king's side, more than believe.

But they kept the letter of loyalty, corresponded with my Lord President, sat still at home, and had little or no

commerce with the Master while that business lasted. Nor was he, on his side, more communicative. Miss

Alison, indeed, was always sending him expresses, but I do not know if she had many answers. Macconochie

rode for her once, and found the highlanders before Carlisle, and the Master riding by the Prince's side in

high favour; he took the letter (so Macconochie tells), opened it, glanced it through with a mouth like a man

whistling, and stuck it in his belt, whence, on his horse passageing, it fell unregarded to the ground. It was

Macconochie who picked it up; and he still kept it, and indeed I have seen it in his hands. News came to

Durrisdeer of course, by the common report, as it goes travelling through a country, a thing always wonderful

to me. By that means the family learned more of the Master's favour with the Prince, and the ground it was

said to stand on: for by a strange condescension in a man so proud only that he was a man still more

ambitious he was said to have crept into notability by truckling to the Irish. Sir Thomas Sullivan, Colonel

Burke and the rest, were his daily comrades, by which course he withdrew himself from his own

countryfolk. All the small intrigues he had a hand in fomenting; thwarted my Lord George upon a thousand

points; was always for the advice that seemed palatable to the Prince, no matter if it was good or bad; and

seems upon the whole (like the gambler he was all through life) to have had less regard to the chances of the

campaign than to the greatness of favour he might aspire to, if, by any luck, it should succeed. For the rest, he

The next was the news of Culloden, which was brought to Durrisdeer by one of the tenants' sons the only

survivor, he declared, of all those that had gone singing up the hill. By an unfortunate chance John Paul and

Macconochie had that very morning found the guinea piece which was the root of all the evil sticking in a

holly bush; they had been "up the gait," as the servants say at Durrisdeer, to the changehouse; and if they

had little left of the guinea, they had less of their wits. What must John Paul do but burst into the hall where

the family sat at dinner, and cry the news to them that "Tam Macmorland was but new lichtit at the door, and

They took the word in silence like folk condemned; only Mr. Henry carrying his palm to his face, and Miss

Alison laying her head outright upon her hands. As for my lord, he was like ashes.

"I have still one son," says he. "And, Henry, I will do you this justice it is the kinder that is left."

It was a strange thing to say in such a moment; but my lord had never forgotten Mr. Henry's speech, and he

had years of injustice on his conscience. Still it was a strange thing, and more than Miss Alison could let

pass. She broke out and blamed my lord for his unnatural words, and Mr. Henry because he was sitting there

in safety when his brother lay dead, and herself because she had given her sweetheart ill words at his

departure, calling him the flower of the flock, wringing her hands, protesting her love, and crying on him by

Mr. Henry got to his feet, and stood holding his chair. It was he that was like ashes now.

"The world knows that, glory be to God!" cries she; and then to Mr. Henry: "There is none but me to know

Time went by in the house after that without much change; only they were now three instead of four, which

was a perpetual reminder of their loss. Miss Alison's money, you are to bear in mind, wag highly needful for

the estates; and the one brother being dead, my old lord soon set his heart upon her marrying the other. Day

in, day out, he would work upon her, sitting by the chimneyside with his finger in his Latin book, and his

eyes set upon her face with a kind of pleasant intentness that became the old gentleman very well. If she

wept, he would condole with her like an ancient man that has seen worse times and begins to think lightly

even of sorrow; if she raged, he would fall to reading again in his Latin book, but always with some civil

excuse; if she offered, as she often did, to let them have her money in a gift, he would show her how little it

consisted with his honour, and remind her, even if he should consent, that Mr. Henry would certainly refuse.

NON VI SED SAEPE CADENDO was a favourite word of his; and no doubt this quiet persecution wore

away much of her resolve; no doubt, besides, he had a great influence on the girl, having stood in the place of

both her parents; and, for that matter, she was herself filled with the spirit of the Duries, and would have gone

a great way for the glory of Durrisdeer; but not so far, I think, as to marry my poor patron, had it not been

This was the work of Tam Macmorland. There was not much harm in Tam; but he had that grievous

weakness, a long tongue; and as the only man in that country who had been out or, rather, who had come in

again he was sure of listeners. Those that have the underhand in any fighting, I have observed, are ever

anxious to persuade themselves they were betrayed. By Tam's account of it, the rebels had been betrayed at

every turn and by every officer they had; they had been betrayed at Derby, and betrayed at Falkirk; the night

march was a step of treachery of my Lord George's; and Culloden was lost by the treachery of the

Macdonalds. This habit of imputing treason grew upon the fool, till at last he must have in Mr. Henry also.

Mr. Henry (by his account) had betrayed the lads of Durrisdeer; he had promised to follow with more men,

and instead of that he had ridden to King George. "Ay, and the next day!" Tam would cry. "The puir bonnie

Master, and the puir, kind lads that rade wi' him, were hardly ower the scaur, or he was aff the Judis! Ay,

weel he has his way o't: he's to be my lord, nae less, and there's mony a cold corp amang the Hieland

Let anyone speak long enough, he will get believers. This view of Mr. Henry's behaviour crept about the

country by little and little; it was talked upon by folk that knew the contrary, but were short of topics; and it

was heard and believed and given out for gospel by the ignorant and the illwilling. Mr. Henry began to be

shunned; yet awhile, and the commons began to murmur as he went by, and the women (who are always the

most bold because they are the most safe) to cry out their reproaches to his face. The Master was cried up for

a saint. It was remembered how he had never any hand in pressing the tenants; as, indeed, no more he had,

except to spend the money. He was a little wild perhaps, the folk said; but how much better was a natural,

wild lad that would soon have settled down, than a skinflint and a sneckdraw, sitting, with his nose in an

account book, to persecute poor tenants! One trollop, who had had a child to the Master, and by all accounts

been very badly used, yet made herself a kind of champion of his memory. She flung a stone one day at Mr.

Mr. Henry reined in his horse and looked upon her, the blood flowing from his lip. "Ay, Jess?" says he. "You

too? And yet ye should ken me better." For it was he who had helped her with money.

The woman had another stone ready, which she made as if she would cast; and he, to ward himself, threw up

"What, would ye beat a lassie, ye ugly ?" cries she, and ran away screaming as though he had struck her.

Next day word went about the country like wildfire that Mr. Henry had beaten Jessie Broun within an inch of

her life. I give it as one instance of how this snowball grew, and one calumny brought another; until my poor

patron was so perished in reputation that he began to keep the house like my lord. All this while, you may be

very sure, he uttered no complaints at home; the very ground of the scandal was too sore a matter to be

handled; and Mr. Henry was very proud and strangely obstinate in silence. My old lord must have heard of it,

by John Paul, if by no one else; and he must at least have remarked the altered habits of his son. Yet even he,

it is probable, knew not how high the feeling ran; and as for Miss Alison, she was ever the last person to hear

In the height of the illfeeling (for it died away as it came, no man could say why) there was an election

forward in the town of St. Bride's, which is the next to Durrisdeer, standing on the Water of Swift; some

grievance was fermenting, I forget what, if ever I heard; and it was currently said there would be broken

heads ere night, and that the sheriff had sent as far as Dumfries for soldiers. My lord moved that Mr. Henry

should be present, assuring him it was necessary to appear, for the credit of the house. "It will soon be

"It is a strange lead that I can take," said Mr. Henry; and when they had pushed him further, "I tell you the

"We will go all three," said my lord; and sure enough he got into his boots (the first time in four years a

sore business John Paul had to get them on), and Miss Alison into her ridingcoat, and all three rode together

The streets were full of the riftraff of all the countryside, who had no sooner clapped eyes on Mr. Henry

than the hissing began, and the hooting, and the cries of "Judas!" and "Where was the Master?" and "Where

were the poor lads that rode with him?" Even a stone was cast; but the more part cried shame at that, for my

old lord's sake, and Miss Alison's. It took not ten minutes to persuade my lord that Mr. Henry had been right.

He said never a word, but turned his horse about, and home again, with his chin upon his bosom. Never a

word said Miss Alison; no doubt she thought the more; no doubt her pride was stung, for she was a

bonebred Durie; and no doubt her heart was touched to see her cousin so unjustly used. That night she was

never in bed; I have often blamed my lady when I call to mind that night, I readily forgive her all; and the

"If Henry still wants me," said she, "he can have me now." To himself she had a different speech: "I bring

June the 1st, 1748, was the day of their marriage. It was December of the same year that first saw me

alighting at the doors of the great house; and from there I take up the history of events as they befell under

I made the last of my journey in the cold end of December, in a mighty dry day of frost, and who should be

my guide but Patey Macmorland, brother of Tam! For a towheaded, barelegged brat of ten, he had more ill

tales upon his tongue than ever I heard the match of; having drunken betimes in his brother's cup. I was still

not so old myself; pride had not yet the upper hand of curiosity; and indeed it would have taken any man, that

cold morning, to hear all the old clashes of the country, and be shown all the places by the way where strange

things had fallen out. I had tales of Claverhouse as we came through the bogs, and tales of the devil, as we

came over the top of the scaur. As we came in by the abbey I heard somewhat of the old monks, and more of

the freetraders, who use its ruins for a magazine, landing for that cause within a cannonshot of Durrisdeer;

and along all the road the Duries and poor Mr. Henry were in the first rank of slander. My mind was thus

highly prejudiced against the family I was about to serve, so that I was half surprised when I beheld

Durrisdeer itself, lying in a pretty, sheltered bay, under the Abbey Hill; the house most commodiously built in

the French fashion, or perhaps Italianate, for I have no skill in these arts; and the place the most beautified

with gardens, lawns, shrubberies, and trees I had ever seen. The money sunk here unproductively would have

Mr. Henry came himself to the door to welcome me: a tall dark young gentleman (the Duries are all black

men) of a plain and not cheerful face, very strong in body, but not so strong in health: taking me by the hand

without any pride, and putting me at home with plain kind speeches. He led me into the hall, booted as I was,

to present me to my lord. It was still daylight; and the first thing I observed was a lozenge of clear glass in the

midst of the shield in the painted window, which I remember thinking a blemish on a room otherwise so

handsome, with its family portraits, and the pargeted ceiling with pendants, and the carved chimney, in one

corner of which my old lord sat reading in his Livy. He was like Mr. Henry, with much the same plain

countenance, only more subtle and pleasant, and his talk a thousand times more entertaining. He had many

questions to ask me, I remember, of Edinburgh College, where I had just received my mastership of arts, and

of the various professors, with whom and their proficiency he seemed well acquainted; and thus, talking of

In the midst of this came Mrs. Henry into the room; she was very far gone, Miss Katharine being due in about

six weeks, which made me think less of her beauty at the first sight; and she used me with more of

condescension than the rest; so that, upon all accounts, I kept her in the third place of my esteem.

It did not take long before all Patey Macmorland's tales were blotted out of my belief, and I was become,

what I have ever since remained, a loving servant of the house of Durrisdeer. Mr. Henry had the chief part of

my affection. It was with him I worked; and I found him an exacting master, keeping all his kindness for

those hours in which we were unemployed, and in the steward's office not only loading me with work, but

viewing me with a shrewd supervision. At length one day he looked up from his paper with a kind of

timidness, and says he, "Mr. Mackellar, I think I ought to tell you that you do very well." That was my first

word of commendation; and from that day his jealousy of my performance was relaxed; soon it was "Mr.

Mackellar" here, and "Mr. Mackellar" there, with the whole family; and for much of my service at

Durrisdeer, I have transacted everything at my own time, and to my own fancy, and never a farthing

challenged. Even while he was driving me, I had begun to find my heart go out to Mr. Henry; no doubt, partly

in pity, he was a man so palpably unhappy. He would fall into a deep muse over our accounts, staring at the

page or out of the window; and at those times the look of his face, and the sigh that would break from him,

awoke in me strong feelings of curiosity and commiseration. One day, I remember, we were late upon some

This room is in the top of the house, and has a view upon the bay, and over a little wooded cape, on the long

sands; and there, right over against the sun, which was then dipping, we saw the freetraders, with a great

force of men and horses, scouring on the beach. Mr. Henry had been staring straight west, so that I marvelled

he was not blinded by the sun; suddenly he frowns, rubs his hand upon his brow, and turns to me with a

"You would not guess what I was thinking," says he. "I was thinking I would be a happier man if I could ride

I told him I had observed he did not enjoy good spirits; and that it was a common fancy to envy others and

think we should be the better of some change; quoting Horace to the point, like a young man fresh from

It was not long before I began to get wind of the causes that so much depressed him. Indeed a blind man must

have soon discovered there was a shadow on that house, the shadow of the Master of Ballantrae. Dead or

alive (and he was then supposed to be dead) that man was his brother's rival: his rival abroad, where there

was never a good word for Mr. Henry, and nothing but regret and praise for the Master; and his rival at home,

They were two old servingmen that were the leaders. John Paul, a little, bald, solemn, stomachy man, a

great professor of piety and (take him for all in all) a pretty faithful servant, was the chief of the Master's

faction. None durst go so far as John. He took a pleasure in disregarding Mr. Henry publicly, often with a

slighting comparison. My lord and Mrs. Henry took him up, to be sure, but never so resolutely as they

should; and he had only to pull his weeping face and begin his lamentations for the Master "his laddie," as

he called him to have the whole condoned. As for Henry, he let these things pass in silence, sometimes with

a sad and sometimes with a black look. There was no rivalling the dead, he knew that; and how to censure an

old servingman for a fault of loyalty, was more than he could see. His was not the tongue to do it.

Macconochie was chief upon the other side; an old, illspoken, swearing, ranting, drunken dog; and I have

often thought it an odd circumstance in human nature that these two servingmen should each have been the

champion of his contrary, and blackened their own faults and made light of their own virtues when they

beheld them in a master. Macconochie had soon smelled out my secret inclination, took me much into his

confidence, and would rant against the Master by the hour, so that even my work suffered. "They're a' daft

here," he would cry, "and be damned to them! The Master the deil's in their thrapples that should call him

sae! it's Mr. Henry should be master now! They were nane sae fond o' the Master when they had him, I'll can

tell ye that. Sorrow on his name! Never a guid word did I hear on his lips, nor naebody else, but just fleering

and flyting and profane cursing deil hae him! There's nane kent his wickedness: him a gentleman! Did ever

ye hear tell, Mr. Mackellar, o' Wully White the wabster? No? Aweel, Wully was an unco praying kind o'

man; a dreigh body, nane o' my kind, I never could abide the sight o' him; onyway he was a great hand by his

way of it, and he up and rebukit the Master for some of his on goings. It was a grand thing for the Master o'

Ball'ntrae to tak up a feud wi' a' wabster, wasnae't?" Macconochie would sneer; indeed, he never took the full

name upon his lips but with a sort of a whine of hatred. "But he did! A fine employ it was: chapping at the

man's door, and crying 'boo' in his lum, and puttin' poother in his fire, and peeoys (1) in his window; till the

man thocht it was auld Hornie was come seekin' him. Weel, to mak a lang story short, Wully gaed gyte. At

the hinder end, they couldnae get him frae his knees, but he just roared and prayed and grat straucht on, till he

got his release. It was fair murder, a'body said that. Ask John Paul he was brawly ashamed o' that game,

him that's sic a Christian man! Grand doin's for the Master o' Ball'ntrae!" I asked him what the Master had

thought of it himself. "How would I ken?" says he. "He never said naething." And on again in his usual

manner of banning and swearing, with every now and again a "Master of Ballantrae" sneered through his

nose. It was in one of these confidences that he showed me the Carlisle letter, the print of the horseshoe still

stamped in the paper. Indeed, that was our last confidence; for he then expressed himself so illnaturedly of

Mrs. Henry that I had to reprimand him sharply, and must thenceforth hold him at a distance.

My old lord was uniformly kind to Mr. Henry; he had even pretty ways of gratitude, and would sometimes

clap him on the shoulder and say, as if to the world at large: "This is a very good son to me." And grateful he

was, no doubt, being a man of sense and justice. But I think that was all, and I am sure Mr. Henry thought so.

The love was all for the dead son. Not that this was often given breath to; indeed, with me but once. My lord

"Ay," said he, looking sideways on the burning fire, "Henry is a good lad, a very good lad," said he. "You

have heard, Mr. Mackellar, that I had another son? I am afraid he was not so virtuous a lad as Mr. Henry; but

dear me, he's dead, Mr. Mackellar! and while he lived we were all very proud of him, all very proud. If he

was not all he should have been in some ways, well, perhaps we loved him better!" This last he said looking

musingly in the fire; and then to me, with a great deal of briskness, "But I am rejoiced you do so well with

Mr. Henry. You will find him a good master." And with that he opened his book, which was the customary

signal of dismission. But it would be little that he read, and less that he understood; Culloden field and the

Master, these would be the burthen of his thought; and the burthen of mine was an unnatural jealousy of the

I am keeping Mrs. Henry for the last, so that this expression of my sentiment may seem unwarrantably

strong: the reader shall judge for himself when I have done. But I must first tell of another matter, which was

the means of bringing me more intimate. I had not yet been six months at Durrisdeer when it chanced that

John Paul fell sick and must keep his bed; drink was the root of his malady, in my poor thought; but he was

tended, and indeed carried himself, like an afflicted saint; and the very minister, who came to visit him,

professed himself edified when he went away. The third morning of his sickness, Mr. Henry comes to me

"Mackellar," says he, "I wish I could trouble you upon a little service. There is a pension we pay; it is John's

part to carry it, and now that he is sick I know not to whom I should look unless it was yourself. The matter is

very delicate; I could not carry it with my own hand for a sufficient reason; I dare not send Macconochie,

who is a talker, and I am I have I am desirous this should not come to Mrs. Henry's ears," says he, and

To say truth, when I found I was to carry money to one Jessie Broun, who was no better than she should be, I

supposed it was some trip of his own that Mr. Henry was dissembling. I was the more impressed when the

It was up a wynd off a side street in St. Bride's that Jessie had her lodging. The place was very ill inhabited,

mostly by the freetrading sort. There was a man with a broken head at the entry; halfway up, in a tavern,

fellows were roaring and singing, though it was not yet nine in the day. Altogether, I had never seen a worse

neighbourhood, even in the great city of Edinburgh, and I was in two minds to go back. Jessie's room was of

a piece with her surroundings, and herself no better. She would not give me the receipt (which Mr. Henry had

told me to demand, for he was very methodical) until she had sent out for spirits, and I had pledged her in a

glass; and all the time she carried on in a lightheaded, reckless way now aping the manners of a lady, now

breaking into unseemly mirth, now making coquettish advances that oppressed me to the ground. Of the

"It's blood money!" said she; "I take it for that: blood money for the betrayed! See what I'm brought down to!

Ah, if the bonnie lad were back again, it would be changed days. But he's deid he's lyin' deid amang the

She had a rapt manner of crying on the bonnie lad, clasping her hands and casting up her eyes, that I think she

must have learned of strolling players; and I thought her sorrow very much of an affectation, and that she

dwelled upon the business because her shame was now all she had to be proud of. I will not say I did not pity

her, but it was a loathing pity at the best; and her last change of manner wiped it out. This was when she had

had enough of me for an audience, and had set her name at last to the receipt. "There!" says she, and taking

the most unwomanly oaths upon her tongue, bade me begone and carry it to the Judas who had sent me. It

was the first time I had heard the name applied to Mr. Henry; I was staggered besides at her sudden

vehemence of word and manner, and got forth from the room, under this shower of curses, like a beaten dog.

But even then I was not quit, for the vixen threw up her window, and, leaning forth, continued to revile me as

I went up the wynd; the freetraders, coming to the tavern door, joined in the mockery, and one had even the

inhumanity to set upon me a very savage small dog, which bit me in the ankle. This was a strong lesson, had I

required one, to avoid ill company; and I rode home in much pain from the bite and considerable indignation

Mr. Henry was in the steward's room, affecting employment, but I could see he was only impatient to hear of

"Well?" says he, as soon as I came in; and when I had told him something of what passed, and that Jessie

seemed an undeserving woman and far from grateful: "She is no friend to me," said he; "but, indeed,

Mackellar, I have few friends to boast of, and Jessie has some cause to be unjust. I need not dissemble what

all the country knows: she was not very well used by one of our family." This was the first time I had heard

him refer to the Master even distantly; and I think he found his tongue rebellious even for that much, but

presently he resumed "This is why I would have nothing said. It would give pain to Mrs. Henry . . . and to

"Mr. Henry," said I, "if you will take a freedom at my hands, I would tell you to let that woman be. What

service is your money to the like of her? She has no sobriety and no economy as for gratitude, you will as

soon get milk from a whinstone; and if you will pretermit your bounty, it will make no change at all but just

Mr. Henry smiled. "But I am grieved about your ankle," said he, the next moment, with a proper gravity.

"And observe," I continued, "I give you this advice upon consideration; and yet my heart was touched for the

"Why, there it is, you see!" said Mr. Henry. "And you are to remember that I knew her once a very decent

lass. Besides which, although I speak little of my family, I think much of its repute."

And with that he broke up the talk, which was the first we had together in such confidence. But the same

afternoon I had the proof that his father was perfectly acquainted with the business, and that it was only from

"I fear you had a painful errand today," says my lord to me, "for which, as it enters in no way among your

duties, I wish to thank you, and to remind you at the same time (in case Mr. Henry should have neglected)

how very desirable it is that no word of it should reach my daughter. Reflections on the dead, Mr. Mackellar,

Anger glowed in my heart; and I could have told my lord to his face how little he had to do, bolstering up the

image of the dead in Mrs. Henry's heart, and how much better he were employed to shatter that false idol; for

My pen is clear enough to tell a plain tale; but to render the effect of an infinity of small things, not one great

enough in itself to be narrated; and to translate the story of looks, and the message of voices when they are

saying no great matter; and to put in half a page the essence of near eighteen months this is what I despair

to accomplish. The fault, to be very blunt, lay all in Mrs. Henry. She felt it a merit to have consented to the

marriage, and she took it like a martyrdom; in which my old lord, whether he knew it or not, fomented her.

She made a merit, besides, of her constancy to the dead, though its name, to a nicer conscience, should have

seemed rather disloyalty to the living; and here also my lord gave her his countenance. I suppose he was glad

to talk of his loss, and ashamed to dwell on it with Mr. Henry. Certainly, at least, he made a little coterie apart

in that family of three, and it was the husband who was shut out. It seems it was an old custom when the

family were alone in Durrisdeer, that my lord should take his wine to the chimneyside, and Miss Alison,

instead of withdrawing, should bring a stool to his knee, and chatter to him privately; and after she had

become my patron's wife the same manner of doing was continued. It should have been pleasant to behold

this ancient gentleman so loving with his daughter, but I was too much a partisan of Mr. Henry's to be

anything but wroth at his exclusion. Many's the time I have seen him make an obvious resolve, quit the table,

and go and join himself to his wife and my Lord Durrisdeer; and on their part, they were never backward to

make him welcome, turned to him smilingly as to an intruding child, and took him into their talk with an

effort so illconcealed that he was soon back again beside me at the table, whence (so great is the hall of

Durrisdeer) we could but hear the murmur of voices at the chimney. There he would sit and watch, and I

along with him; and sometimes by my lord's head sorrowfully shaken, or his hand laid on Mrs. Henry's head,

or hers upon his knee as if in consolation, or sometimes by an exchange of tearful looks, we would draw our

conclusion that the talk had gone to the old subject and the shadow of the dead was in the hall.

I have hours when I blame Mr. Henry for taking all too patiently; yet we are to remember he was married in

pity, and accepted his wife upon that term. And, indeed, he had small encouragement to make a stand. Once, I

remember, he announced he had found a man to replace the pane of the stained window, which, as it was he

that managed all the business, was a thing clearly within his attributions. But to the Master's fancies, that

pane was like a relic; and on the first word of any change, the blood flew to Mrs. Henry's face.

"I wonder at myself," says Mr. Henry, with more of bitterness than I had ever heard him to express.

Thereupon my old lord stepped in with his smooth talk, so that before the meal was at an end all seemed

forgotten; only that, after dinner, when the pair had withdrawn as usual to the chimney side, we could see

her weeping with her head upon his knee. Mr. Henry kept up the talk with me upon some topic of the estates

he could speak of little else but business, and was never the best of company; but he kept it up that day with

more continuity, his eye straying ever and again to the chimney, and his voice changing to another key, but

without check of delivery. The pane, however, was not replaced; and I believe he counted it a great defeat.

Whether he was stout enough or no, God knows he was kind enough. Mrs. Henry had a manner of

condescension with him, such as (in a wife) would have pricked my vanity into an ulcer; he took it like a

favour. She held him at the staff's end; forgot and then remembered and unbent to him, as we do to children;

burthened him with cold kindness; reproved him with a change of colour and a bitten lip, like one shamed by

his disgrace: ordered him with a look of the eye, when she was off her guard; when she was on the watch,

pleaded with him for the most natural attentions, as though they were unheardof favours. And to all this he

replied with the most unwearied service, loving, as folk say, the very ground she trod on, and carrying that

love in his eyes as bright as a lamp. When Miss Katharine was to be born, nothing would serve but he must

stay in the room behind the head of the bed. There he sat, as white (they tell me) as a sheet, and the sweat

dropping from his brow; and the handkerchief he had in his hand was crushed into a little ball no bigger than

a musketbullet. Nor could he bear the sight of Miss Katharine for many a day; indeed, I doubt if he was ever

what he should have been to my young lady; for the which want of natural feeling he was loudly blamed.

Such was the state of this family down to the 7th April, 1749, when there befell the first of that series of

On that day I was sitting in my room a little before supper, when John Paul burst open the door with no

civility of knocking, and told me there was one below that wished to speak with the steward; sneering at the

I asked what manner of man, and what his name was; and this disclosed the cause of John's illhumour; for it

appeared the visitor refused to name himself except to me, a sore affront to the majordomo's consequence.

I found in the entrance hall a big man, very plainly habited, and wrapped in a seacloak, like one new landed,

as indeed he was. Not, far off Macconochie was standing, with his tongue out of his mouth and his hand upon

his chin, like a dull fellow thinking hard; and the stranger, who had brought his cloak about his face, appeared

uneasy. He had no sooner seen me coming than he went to meet me with an effusive manner.

"My dear man," said he, "a thousand apologies for disturbing you, but I'm in the most awkward position. And

there's a son of a ramrod there that I should know the looks of, and more betoken I believe that he knows

mine. Being in this family, sir, and in a place of some responsibility (which was the cause I took the liberty to

"You may be sure at least," says I, "that all of that party are quite safe in Durrisdeer."

"My dear man, it is my very thought," says he. "You see, I have just been set on shore here by a very honest

man, whose name I cannot remember, and who is to stand off and on for me till morning, at some danger to

himself; and, to be clear with you, I am a little concerned lest it should be at some to me. I have saved my life

so often, Mr. , I forget your name, which is a very good one that, faith, I would be very loath to lose it

after all. And the son of a ramrod, whom I believe I saw before Carlisle . . . "

"Well, and it's a delight to hear you say so," says the stranger. "The truth is that my name is not a very

suitable one in this country of Scotland. With a gentleman like you, my dear man, I would have no

concealments of course; and by your leave I'll just breathe it in your ear. They call me Francis Burke

Colonel Francis Burke; and I am here, at a most damnable risk to myself, to see your masters if you'll

excuse me, my good man, for giving them the name, for I'm sure it's a circumstance I would never have

guessed from your appearance. And if you would just be so very obliging as to take my name to them, you

might say that I come bearing letters which I am sure they will be very rejoiced to have the reading of."

Colonel Francis Burke was one of the Prince's Irishmen, that did his cause such an infinity of hurt, and were

so much distasted of the Scots at the time of the rebellion; and it came at once into my mind, how the Master

of Ballantrae had astonished all men by going with that party. In the same moment a strong foreboding of the

"If you will step in here," said I, opening a chamber door, "I will let my lord know."

Up to the hall I went, slowfooted. There they were, all three my old lord in his place, Mrs. Henry at work

by the window, Mr. Henry (as was much his custom) pacing the low end. In the midst was the table laid for

supper. I told them briefly what I had to say. My old lord lay back in his seat. Mrs. Henry sprang up standing

with a mechanical motion, and she and her husband stared at each other's eyes across the room; it was the

strangest, challenging look these two exchanged, and as they looked, the colour faded in their faces. Then Mr.

Henry turned to me; not to speak, only to sign with his finger; but that was enough, and I went down again

When we returned, these three were in much the same position I same left them in; I believe no word had

"My Lord Durrisdeer, no doubt?" says the Colonel, bowing, and my lord bowed in answer. "And this,"

"I have never taken that name," said Mr. Henry; "but I am Henry Durie, at your service."

Then the Colonel turns to Mrs. Henry, bowing with his hat upon his heart and the most killing airs of

gallantry. "There can be no mistake about so fine a figure of a lady," says he. "I address the seductive Miss

"I am Mrs. Henry Durie," said she; "but before my marriage my name was Alison Graeme."

Then my lord spoke up. "I am an old man, Colonel Burke," said he, "and a frail one. It will be mercy on your

part to be expeditious. Do you bring me news of " he hesitated, and then the words broke from him with a

"My dear lord, I will be round with you like a soldier," said the Colonel. "I do."

My lord held out a wavering hand; he seemed to wave a signal, but whether it was to give him time or to

speak on, was more than we could guess. At length he got out the one word, "Good?"

"Why, the very best in the creation!" cries the Colonel. "For my good friend and admired comrade is at this

hour in the fine city of Paris, and as like as not, if I know anything of his habits, he will be drawing in his

Mrs. Henry was indeed the colour of death, and drooped against the windowframe. But when Mr. Henry

made a movement as if to run to her, she straightened with a sort of shiver. "I am well," she said, with her

Mr. Henry stopped, and his face had a strong twitch of anger. The next moment he had turned to the Colonel.

"You must not blame yourself," says he, "for this effect on Mrs. Durie. It is only natural; we were all brought

Mrs. Henry looked at her husband with something like relief or even gratitude. In my way of thinking, that

"You must try to forgive me, Mrs. Durie, for indeed and I am just an Irish savage," said the Colonel; "and I

deserve to be shot for not breaking the matter more artistically to a lady. But here are the Master's own

letters; one for each of the three of you; and to be sure (if I know anything of my friend's genius) he will tell

He brought the three letters forth as he spoke, arranged them by their superscriptions, presented the first to

my lord, who took it greedily, and advanced towards Mrs. Henry holding out the second.

The Colonel was a quick man, but at this he was somewhat nonplussed. "To be sure!" says he; "how very dull

At last Mr. Henry reached forth his hand, and there was nothing to be done but give it up. Mr. Henry took the

letters (both hers and his own), and looked upon their outside, with his brows knit hard, as if he were

thinking. He had surprised me all through by his excellent behaviour; but he was to excel himself now.

"Let me give you a hand to your room," said he to his wife. "This has come something of the suddenest; and,

Again she looked upon him with the same thought of wonder; but he gave her no time, coming straight to

where she stood. "It will be better so, believe me," said he; "and Colonel Burke is too considerate not to

excuse you." And with that he took her hand by the fingers, and led her from the hall.

Mrs. Henry returned no more that night; and when Mr. Henry went to visit her next morning, as I heard long

And by these two speeches, to my way of thinking, each undid a great part of what they had previously done

well. But the letter, sure enough, came into my hands, and by me was burned, unopened.

To be very exact as to the adventures of the Master after Culloden, I wrote not long ago to Colonel Burke,

now a Chevalier of the Order of St. Louis, begging him for some notes in writing, since I could scarce depend

upon my memory at so great an interval. To confess the truth, I have been somewhat embarrassed by his

response; for he sent me the complete memoirs of his life, touching only in places on the Master; running to a

much greater length than my whole story, and not everywhere (as it seems to me) designed for edification. He

begged in his letter, dated from Ettenheim, that I would find a publisher for the whole, after I had made what

use of it I required; and I think I shall best answer my own purpose and fulfil his wishes by printing certain

parts of it in full. In this way my readers will have a detailed, and, I believe, a very genuine account of some

essential matters; and if any publisher should take a fancy to the Chevalier's manner of narration, he knows

where to apply for the rest, of which there is plenty at his service. I put in my first extract here, so that it may

stand in the place of what the Chevalier told us over our wine in the hall of Durrisdeer; but you are to suppose

it was not the brutal fact, but a very varnished version that he offered to my lord.

. . . I left Ruthven (it's hardly necessary to remark) with much greater satisfaction than I had come to it; but

whether I missed my way in the deserts, or whether my companions failed me, I soon found myself alone.

This was a predicament very disagreeable; for I never understood this horrid country or savage people, and

the last stroke of the Prince's withdrawal had made us of the Irish more unpopular than ever. I was reflecting

on my poor chances, when I saw another horseman on the hill, whom I supposed at first to have been a

phantom, the news of his death in the very front at Culloden being current in the army generally. This was the

Master of Ballantrae, my Lord Durrisdeer's son, a young nobleman of the rarest gallantry and parts, and

equally designed by nature to adorn a Court and to reap laurels in the field. Our meeting was the more

welcome to both, as he was one of the few Scots who had used the Irish with consideration, and as he might

now be of very high utility in aiding my escape. Yet what founded our particular friendship was a

This was on the second day of our flight, after we had slept one night in the rain upon the inclination of a

mountain. There was an Appin man, Alan Black Stewart (or some such name, (2) but I have seen him since in

France) who chanced to be passing the same way, and had a jealousy of my companion. Very uncivil

expressions were exchanged; and Stewart calls upon the Master to alight and have it out.

"Why, Mr. Stewart," says the Master, "I think at the present time I would prefer to run a race with you." And

Stewart ran after us, a childish thing to do, for more than a mile; and I could not help laughing, as I looked

back at last and saw him on a hill, holding his hand to his side, and nearly burst with running.

"But, all the same," I could not help saying to my companion, "I would let no man run after me for any such

proper purpose, and not give him his desire. It was a good jest, but it smells a trifle cowardly."

He bent his brows at me. "I do pretty well," says he, "when I saddle myself with the most unpopular man in

"O, bedad," says I, "I could show you a more unpopular with the naked eye. And if you like not my company,

"Colonel Burke," says he, "do not let us quarrel; and, to that effect, let me assure you I am the least patient

"At this rate," says he, reining in, "we shall not go very far. And I propose we do one of two things upon the

instant: either quarrel and be done; or make a sure bargain to bear everything at each other's hands."

"I said no such foolishness," he replied. "I have a brother of my own, and I think no more of him than of a

colewort. But if we are to have our noses rubbed together in this course of flight, let us each dare to be

ourselves like savages, and each swear that he will neither resent nor deprecate the other. I am a pretty bad

"O, I am as bad as yourself," said I. "There is no skim milk in Francis Burke. But which is it to be? Fight or

This proposition was too highly chivalrous not to take my fancy; and, strange as it may seem of two

wellborn gentlemen of today, we span a halfcrown (like a pair of ancient paladins) whether we were to

cut each other's throats or be sworn friends. A more romantic circumstance can rarely have occurred; and it is

one of those points in my memoirs, by which we may see the old tales of Homer and the poets are equally

true today at least, of the noble and genteel. The coin fell for peace, and we shook hands upon our

bargain. And then it was that my companion explained to me his thought in running away from Mr. Stewart,

which was certainly worthy of his political intellect. The report of his death, he said, was a great guard to

him; Mr. Stewart having recognised him, had become a danger; and he had taken the briefest road to that

gentleman's silence. "For," says he, "Alan Black is too vain a man to narrate any such story of himself."

Towards afternoon we came down to the shores of that loch for which we were heading; and there was the

ship, but newly come to anchor. She was the SAINTEMARIEDESANGES, out of the port of Havrede

Grace. The Master, after we had signalled for a boat, asked me if I knew the captain. I told him he was a

countryman of mine, of the most unblemished integrity, but, I was afraid, a rather timorous man.

I asked him if he meant about the battle? for if the captain once knew the standard was down, he would

"My dear man," said I, "who thinks of the arms? But, to be sure, we must remember our friends. They will be

close upon our heels, perhaps the Prince himself, and if the ship be gone, a great number of valuable lives

"The captain and the crew have lives also, if you come to that," says Ballantrae.

This I declared was but a quibble, and that I would not hear of the captain being told; and then it was that

Ballantrae made me a witty answer, for the sake of which (and also because I have been blamed myself in

this business of the SAINTEMARIEDESANGES) I have related the whole conversation as it passed.

"Frank," says he, "remember our bargain. I must not object to your holding your tongue, which I hereby even

I could not help laughing at this; though I still forewarned him what would come of it.

"The devil may come of it for what I care," says the reckless fellow. "I have always done exactly as I felt

As is well known, my prediction came true. The captain had no sooner heard the news than he cut his cable

The ship was very old; and the skipper, although the most honest of men (and Irish too), was one of the least

capable. The wind blew very boisterous, and the sea raged extremely. All that day we had little heart whether

to eat or drink; went early to rest in some concern of mind; and (as if to give us a lesson) in the night the wind

chopped suddenly into the northeast, and blew a hurricane. We were awaked by the dreadful thunder of the

tempest and the stamping of the mariners on deck; so that I supposed our last hour was certainly come; and

the terror of my mind was increased out of all measure by Ballantrae, who mocked at my devotions. It is in

hours like these that a man of any piety appears in his true light, and we find (what we are taught as babes)

the small trust that can be set in worldly friends. I would be unworthy of my religion if I let this pass without

particular remark. For three days we lay in the dark in the cabin, and had but a biscuit to nibble. On the fourth

the wind fell, leaving the ship dismasted and heaving on vast billows. The captain had not a guess of whither

we were blown; he was stark ignorant of his trade, and could do naught but bless the Holy Virgin; a very

good thing, too, but scarce the whole of seamanship. It seemed, our one hope was to be picked up by another

vessel; and if that should prove to be an English ship, it might be no great blessing to the Master and myself.

The fifth and sixth days we tossed there helpless. The seventh some sail was got on her, but she was an

unwieldy vessel at the best, and we made little but leeway. All the time, indeed, we had been drifting to the

south and west, and during the tempest must have driven in that direction with unheardof violence. The

ninth dawn was cold and black, with a great sea running, and every mark of foul weather. In this situation we

were overjoyed to sight a small ship on the horizon, and to perceive her go about and head for the

SAINTEMARIE. But our gratification did not very long endure; for when she had laid to and lowered a

boat, it was immediately filled with disorderly fellows, who sang and shouted as they pulled across to us, and

swarmed in on our deck with bare cutlasses, cursing loudly. Their leader was a horrible villain, with his face

blacked and his whiskers curled in ringlets; Teach, his name; a most notorious pirate. He stamped about the

deck, raving and crying out that his name was Satan, and his ship was called Hell. There was something

about him like a wicked child or a halfwitted person, that daunted me beyond expression. I whispered in the

ear of Ballantrae that I would not be the last to volunteer, and only prayed God they might be short of hands;

The word pleased him; and (not to dwell upon these shocking incidents) Ballantrae and I and two others were

taken for recruits, while the skipper and all the rest were cast into the sea by the method of walking the plank.

It was the first time I had seen this done; my heart died within me at the spectacle; and Master Teach or one

of his acolytes (for my head was too much lost to be precise) remarked upon my pale face in a very alarming

manner. I had the strength to cut a step or two of a jig, and cry out some ribaldry, which saved me for that

time; but my legs were like water when I must get down into the skiff among these miscreants; and what with

my horror of my company and fear of the monstrous billows, it was all I could do to keep an Irish tongue and

break a jest or two as we were pulled aboard. By the blessing of God, there was a fiddle in the pirate ship,

which I had no sooner seen than I fell upon; and in my quality of crowder I had the heavenly good luck to get

favour in their eyes. CROWDING PAT was the name they dubbed me with; and it was little I cared for a

What kind of a pandemonium that vessel was, I cannot describe, but she was commanded by a lunatic, and

might be called a floating Bedlam. Drinking, roaring, singing, quarrelling, dancing, they were never all sober

at one time; and there were days together when, if a squall had supervened, it must have sent us to the

bottom; or if a king's ship had come along, it would have found us quite helpless for defence. Once or twice

we sighted a sail, and, if we were sober enough, overhauled it, God forgive us! and if we were all too drunk,

she got away, and I would bless the saints under my breath. Teach ruled, if you can call that rule which

brought no order, by the terror he created; and I observed the man was very vain of his position. I have

known marshals of France ay, and even Highland chieftains that were less openly puffed up; which

throws a singular light on the pursuit of honour and glory. Indeed, the longer we live, the more we perceive

the sagacity of Aristotle and the other old philosophers; and though I have all my life been eager for

legitimate distinctions, I can lay my hand upon my heart, at the end of my career, and declare there is not one

no, nor yet life itself which is worth acquiring or preserving at the slightest cost of dignity.

It was long before I got private speech of Ballantrae; but at length one night we crept out upon the boltsprit,

"My mind is very different," said Ballantrae; "for I am going to deliver myself. This Teach is the poorest

creature possible; we make no profit of him, and lie continually open to capture; and," says he, "I am not

going to be a tarry pirate for nothing, nor yet to hang in chains if I can help it." And he told me what was in

his mind to better the state of the ship in the way of discipline, which would give us safety for the present,

and a sooner hope of deliverance when they should have gained enough and should break up their company.

I confessed to him ingenuously that my nerve was quite shook amid these horrible surroundings, and I durst

A few days after, there befell an accident which had nearly hanged us all; and offers the most extraordinary

picture of the folly that ruled in our concerns. We were all pretty drunk: and some bedlamite spying a sail,

Teach put the ship about in chase without a glance, and we began to bustle up the arms and boast of the

horrors that should follow. I observed Ballantrae stood quiet in the bows, looking under the shade of his

hand; but for my part, true to my policy among these savages, I was at work with the busiest and passing Irish

It was the merest drunken braggadocio at such a stage, and might have lost us a valuable prize; but I thought

"You may perhaps like to know, you drunken dog," says he, "that you are chasing a king's ship."

Teach roared him the lie; but he ran at the same time to the bulwarks, and so did they all. I have never seen so

many drunken men struck suddenly sober. The cruiser had gone about, upon our impudent display of colours;

she was just then filling on the new tack; her ensign blew out quite plain to see; and even as we stared, there

came a puff of smoke, and then a report, and a shot plunged in the waves a good way short of us. Some ran to

the ropes, and got the SARAH round with an incredible swiftness. One fellow fell on the rum barrel, which

stood broached upon the deck, and rolled it promptly overboard. On my part, I made for the Jolly Roger,

struck it, tossed it in the sea; and could have flung myself after, so vexed was I with our mismanagement. As

for Teach, he grew as pale as death, and incontinently went down to his cabin. Only twice he came on deck

that afternoon; went to the taffrail; took a long look at the king's ship, which was still on the horizon heading

after us; and then, without speech, back to his cabin. You may say he deserted us; and if it had not been for

one very capable sailor we had on board, and for the lightness of the airs that blew all day, we must certainly

It is to be supposed Teach was humiliated, and perhaps alarmed for his position with the crew; and the way in

which he set about regaining what he had lost, was highly characteristic of the man. Early next day we

smelled him burning sulphur in his cabin and crying out of "Hell, hell!" which was well understood among

the crew, and filled their minds with apprehension. Presently he comes on deck, a perfect figure of fun, his

face blacked, his hair and whiskers curled, his belt stuck full of pistols; chewing bits of glass so that the blood

ran down his chin, and brandishing a dirk. I do not know if he had taken these manners from the Indians of

America, where he was a native; but such was his way, and he would always thus announce that he was

wound up to horrid deeds. The first that came near him was the fellow who had sent the rum overboard the

day before; him he stabbed to the heart, damning him for a mutineer; and then capered about the body, raving

and swearing and daring us to come on. It was the silliest exhibition; and yet dangerous too, for the cowardly

All of a sudden Ballantrae stepped forth. "Have done with this playacting," says he. "Do you think to

frighten us with making faces? We saw nothing of you yesterday, when you were wanted; and we did well

There was a murmur and a movement in the crew, of pleasure and alarm, I thought, in nearly equal parts. As

for Teach, he gave a barbarous howl, and swung his dirk to fling it, an art in which (like many seamen) he

"Knock that out of his hand!" says Ballantrae, so sudden and sharp that my arm obeyed him before my mind

"Go down to your cabin," cries Ballantrae, "and come on deck again when you are sober. Do you think we

are going to hang for you, you blackfaced, halfwitted, drunken brute and butcher? Go down!" And he

stamped his foot at him with such a sudden smartness that Teach fairly ran for it to the companion.

"And now, mates," says Ballantrae, "a word with you. I don't know if you are gentlemen of fortune for the

fun of the thing, but I am not. I want to make money, and get ashore again, and spend it like a man. And on

one thing my mind is made up: I will not hang if I can help it. Come: give me a hint; I'm only a beginner! Is

One of the men spoke up: he said by rights they should have a quartermaster; and no sooner was the word out

of his mouth than they were all of that opinion. The thing went by acclamation, Ballantrae was made

quartermaster, the rum was put in his charge, laws were passed in imitation of those of a pirate by the name

of Roberts, and the last proposal was to make an end of Teach. But Ballantrae was afraid of a more efficient

captain, who might be a counterweight to himself, and he opposed this stoutly. Teach, he said, was good

enough to board ships and frighten fools with his blacked face and swearing; we could scarce get a better man

than Teach for that; and besides, as the man was now disconsidered and as good as deposed, we might reduce

his proportion of the plunder. This carried it; Teach's share was cut down to a mere derision, being actually

less than mine; and there remained only two points: whether he would consent, and who was to announce to

And he stepped to the companion and down alone into the cabin to face that drunken savage.

"This is the man for us," cries one of the hands. "Three cheers for the quartermaster!" which were given with

a will, my own voice among the loudest, and I dare say these plaudits had their effect on Master Teach in the

cabin, as we have seen of late days how shouting in the streets may trouble even the minds of legislators.

What passed precisely was never known, though some of the heads of it came to the surface later on; and we

were all amazed, as well as gratified, when Ballantrae came on deck with Teach upon his arm, and announced

I pass swiftly over those twelve or fifteen months in which we continued to keep the sea in the North

Atlantic, getting our food and water from the ships we overhauled, and doing on the whole a pretty fortunate

business. Sure, no one could wish to read anything so ungenteel as the memoirs of a pirate, even an unwilling

one like me! Things went extremely better with our designs, and Ballantrae kept his lead, to my admiration,

from that day forth. I would be tempted to suppose that a gentleman must everywhere be first, even aboard a

rover: but my birth is every whit as good as any Scottish lord's, and I am not ashamed to confess that I stayed

Crowding Pat until the end, and was not much better than the crew's buffoon. Indeed, it was no scene to bring

out my merits. My health suffered from a variety of reasons; I was more at home to the last on a horse's back

than a ship's deck; and, to be ingenuous, the fear of the sea was constantly in my mind, battling with the fear

of my companions. I need not cry myself up for courage; I have done well on many fields under the eyes of

famous generals, and earned my late advancement by an act of the most distinguished valour before many

witnesses. But when we must proceed on one of our abordages, the heart of Francis Burke was in his boots;

the little eggshell skiff in which we must set forth, the horrible heaving of the vast billows, the height of the

ship that we must scale, the thought of how many might be there in garrison upon their legitimate defence,

the scowling heavens which (in that climate) so often looked darkly down upon our exploits, and the mere

crying of the wind in my ears, were all considerations most unpalatable to my valour. Besides which, as I was

always a creature of the nicest sensibility, the scenes that must follow on our success tempted me as little as

the chances of defeat. Twice we found women on board; and though I have seen towns sacked, and of late

days in France some very horrid public tumults, there was something in the smallness of the numbers

engaged, and the bleak dangerous seasurroundings, that made these acts of piracy far the most revolting. I

confess ingenuously I could never proceed unless I was three parts drunk; it was the same even with the crew;

Teach himself was fit for no enterprise till he was full of rum; and it was one of the most difficult parts of

Ballantrae's performance, to serve us with liquor in the proper quantities. Even this he did to admiration;

being upon the whole the most capable man I ever met with, and the one of the most natural genius. He did

not even scrape favour with the crew, as I did, by continual buffoonery made upon a very anxious heart; but

preserved on most occasions a great deal of gravity and distance; so that he was like a parent among a family

of young children, or a schoolmaster with his boys. What made his part the harder to perform, the men were

most inveterate grumblers; Ballantrae's discipline, little as it was, was yet irksome to their love of licence;

and what was worse, being kept sober they had time to think. Some of them accordingly would fall to

repenting their abominable crimes; one in particular, who was a good Catholic, and with whom I would

sometimes steal apart for prayer; above all in bad weather, fogs, lashing rain and the like, when we would be

the less observed; and I am sure no two criminals in the cart have ever performed their devotions with more

anxious sincerity. But the rest, having no such grounds of hope, fell to another pastime, that of computation.

All day long they would he telling up their shares or grooming over the result. I have said we were pretty

fortunate. But an observation fails to be made: that in this world, in no business that I have tried, do the

profits rise to a man's expectations. We found many ships and took many; yet few of them contained much

money, their goods were usually nothing to our purpose what did we want with a cargo of ploughs, or even

of tobacco? and it is quite a painful reflection how many whole crews we have made to walk the plank for

In the meanwhile our ship was growing very foul, and it was high time we should make for our PORT DE

CARRENAGE, which was in the estuary of a river among swamps. It was openly understood that we should

then break up and go and squander our proportions of the spoil; and this made every man greedy of a little

more, so that our decision was delayed from day to day. What finally decided matters, was a trifling accident,

such as an ignorant person might suppose incidental to our way of life. But here I must explain: on only one

of all the ships we boarded, the first on which we found women, did we meet with any genuine resistance. On

that occasion we had two men killed and several injured, and if it had not been for the gallantry of Ballantrae

we had surely been beat back at last. Everywhere else the defence (where there was any at all) was what the

worst troops in Europe would have laughed at; so that the most dangerous part of our employment was to

clamber up the side of the ship; and I have even known the poor souls on board to cast us a line, so eager

were they to volunteer instead of walking the plank. This constant immunity had made our fellows very soft,

so that I understood how Teach had made so deep a mark upon their minds; for indeed the company of that

lunatic was the chief danger in our way of life. The accident to which I have referred was this: We had

sighted a little fullrigged ship very close under our board in a haze; she sailed near as well as we did I

should be nearer truth if I said, near as ill; and we cleared the bowchaser to see if we could bring a spar or

two about their ears. The swell was exceeding great; the motion of the ship beyond description; it was little

wonder if our gunners should fire thrice and be still quite broad of what they aimed at. But in the meanwhile

the chase had cleared a stern gun, the thickness of the air concealing them; and being better marksmen, their

first shot struck us in the bows, knocked our two gunners into mincemeat, so that we were all sprinkled with

the blood, and plunged through the deck into the forecastle, where we slept. Ballantrae would have held on;

indeed, there was nothing in this CONTRETEMPS to affect the mind of any soldier; but he had a quick

perception of the men's wishes, and it was plain this lucky shot had given them a sickener of their trade. In a

moment they were all of one mind: the chase was drawing away from us, it was needless to hold on, the

SARAH was too foul to overhaul a bottle, it was mere foolery to keep the sea with her; and on these

pretended grounds her head was incontinently put about and the course laid for the river. It was strange to see

what merriment fell on that ship's company, and how they stamped about the deck jesting, and each

We were nine days making our port, so light were the airs we had to sail on, so foul the ship's bottom; but

early on the tenth, before dawn, and in a light lifting haze, we passed the head. A little after, the haze lifted,

and fell again, showing us a cruiser very close. This was a sore blow, happening so near our refuge. There

was a great debate of whether she had seen us, and if so whether it was likely they had recognised the

SARAH. We were very careful, by destroying every member of those crews we overhauled, to leave no

evidence as to our own persons; but the appearance of the SARAH herself we could not keep so private; and

above all of late, since she had been foul, and we had pursued many ships without success, it was plain that

her description had been often published. I supposed this alert would have made us separate upon the instant.

But here again that original genius of Ballantrae's had a surprise in store for me. He and Teach (and it was the

most remarkable step of his success) had gone hand in hand since the first day of his appointment. I often

questioned him upon the fact, and never got an answer but once, when he told me he and Teach had an

understanding "which would very much surprise the crew if they should hear of it, and would surprise

himself a good deal if it was carried out." Well, here again he and Teach were of a mind; and by their joint

procurement the anchor was no sooner down than the whole crew went off upon a scene of drunkenness

indescribable. By afternoon we were a mere shipful of lunatical persons, throwing of things overboard,

howling of different songs at the same time, quarrelling and falling together, and then forgetting our quarrels

to embrace. Ballantrae had bidden me drink nothing, and feign drunkenness, as I valued my life; and I have

never passed a day so wearisomely, lying the best part of the time upon the forecastle and watching the

swamps and thickets by which our little basin was entirely surrounded for the eye. A little after dusk

Ballantrae stumbled up to my side, feigned to fall, with a drunken laugh, and before he got his feet again,

whispered me to "reel down into the cabin and seem to fall asleep upon a locker, for there would be need of

me soon." I did as I was told, and coming into the cabin, where it was quite dark, let myself fall on the first

locker. There was a man there already; by the way he stirred and threw me off, I could not think he was much

in liquor; and yet when I had found another place, he seemed to continue to sleep on. My heart now beat very

hard, for I saw some desperate matter was in act. Presently down came Ballantrae, lit the lamp, looked about

the cabin, nodded as if pleased, and on deck again without a word. I peered out from between my fingers, and

saw there were three of us slumbering, or feigning to slumber, on the lockers: myself, one Dutton and one

Grady, both resolute men. On deck the rest were got to a pitch of revelry quite beyond the bounds of what is

human; so that no reasonable name can describe the sounds they were now making. I have heard many a

drunken bout in my time, many on board that very SARAH, but never anything the least like this, which

made me early suppose the liquor had been tampered with. It was a long while before these yells and howls

died out into a sort of miserable moaning, and then to silence; and it seemed a long while after that before

Ballantrae came down again, this time with Teach upon his heels. The latter cursed at the sight of us three

"Tut," says Ballantrae, "you might fire a pistol at their ears. You know what stuff they have been

There was a hatch in the cabin floor, and under that the richest part of the booty was stored against the day of

division. It fastened with a ring and three padlocks, the keys (for greater security) being divided; one to

Teach, one to Ballantrae, and one to the mate, a man called Hammond. Yet I was amazed to see they were

now all in the one hand; and yet more amazed (still looking through my fingers) to observe Ballantrae and

Teach bring up several packets, four of them in all, very carefully made up and with a loop for carriage.

"One word," says Ballantrae. "I have discovered there is another man besides yourself who knows a private

"I do not know for that," says Ballantrae. "For there are several other circumstances with which I must

acquaint you. First of all, there is no bullet in your pistols, which (if you remember) I was kind enough to

load for both of us this morning. Secondly, as there is someone else who knows a passage, you must think it

highly improbable I should saddle myself with a lunatic like you. Thirdly, these gentlemen (who need no

longer pretend to be asleep) are those of my party, and will now proceed to gag and bind you to the mast; and

when your men awaken (if they ever do awake after the drugs we have mingled in their liquor), I am sure

they will be so obliging as to deliver you, and you will have no difficulty, I daresay, to explain the business of

Not a word said Teach, but looked at us like a frightened baby as we gagged and bound him.

"Now you see, you mooncalf," says Ballantrae, "why we made four packets. Heretofore you have been

That was our last word on board the SARAH. We four, with our four packets, lowered ourselves softly into a

skiff, and left that ship behind us as silent as the grave, only for the moaning of some of the drunkards. There

was a fog about breasthigh on the waters; so that Dutton, who knew the passage, must stand on his feet to

direct our rowing; and this, as it forced us to row gently, was the means of our deliverance. We were yet but a

little way from the ship, when it began to come grey, and the birds to fly abroad upon the water. All of a

sudden Dutton clapped down upon his hams, and whispered us to be silent for our lives, and hearken. Sure

enough, we heard a little faint creak of oars upon one hand, and then again, and further off, a creak of oars

upon the other. It was clear we had been sighted yesterday in the morning; here were the cruiser's boats to cut

us out; here were we defenceless in their very midst. Sure, never were poor souls more perilously placed; and

as we lay there on our oars, praying God the mist might hold, the sweat poured from my brow. Presently we

heard one of the boats where we might have thrown a biscuit in her. "Softly, men," we heard an officer

"Never mind the path," says Ballantrae; "we must get shelter anyhow; let us pull straight ahead for the sides

This we did with the most anxious precaution, rowing, as best we could, upon our hands, and steering at a

venture in the fog, which was (for all that) our only safety. But Heaven guided us; we touched ground at a

thicket; scrambled ashore with our treasure; and having no other way of concealment, and the mist beginning

already to lighten, hove down the skiff and let her sink. We were still but new under cover when the sun rose;

and at the same time, from the midst of the basin, a great shouting of seamen sprang up, and we knew the

SARAH was being boarded. I heard afterwards the officer that took her got great honour; and it's true the

approach was creditably managed, but I think he had an easy capture when he came to board. (3)

I was still blessing the saints for my escape, when I became aware we were in trouble of another kind. We

were here landed at random in a vast and dangerous swamp; and how to come at the path was a concern of

doubt, fatigue, and peril. Dutton, indeed, was of opinion we should wait until the ship was gone, and fish up

the skiff; for any delay would be more wise than to go blindly ahead in that morass. One went back

accordingly to the basinside and (peering through the thicket) saw the fog already quite drunk up, and

English colours flying on the SARAH, but no movement made to get her under way. Our situation was now

very doubtful. The swamp was an unhealthful place to linger in; we had been so greedy to bring treasures that

we had brought but little food; it was highly desirable, besides, that we should get clear of the neighbourhood

and into the settlements before the news of the capture went abroad; and against all these considerations,

there was only the peril of the passage on the other side. I think it not wonderful we decided on the active

It was already blistering hot when we set forth to pass the marsh, or rather to strike the path, by compass.

Dutton took the compass, and one or other of us three carried his proportion of the treasure. I promise you he

kept a sharp eye to his rear, for it was like the man's soul that he must trust us with. The thicket was as close

as a bush; the ground very treacherous, so that we often sank in the most terrifying manner, and must go

round about; the heat, besides, was stifling, the air singularly heavy, and the stinging insects abounded in

such myriads that each of us walked under his own cloud. It has often been commented on, how much better

gentlemen of birth endure fatigue than persons of the rabble; so that walking officers who must tramp in the

dirt beside their men, shame them by their constancy. This was well to be observed in the present instance;

for here were Ballantrae and I, two gentlemen of the highest breeding, on the one hand; and on the other,

Grady, a common mariner, and a man nearly a giant in physical strength. The case of Dutton is not in point,

for I confess he did as well as any of us. (4) But as for Grady, he began early to lament his case, tailed in the

rear, refused to carry Dutton's packet when it came his turn, clamoured continually for rum (of which we had

too little), and at last even threatened us from behind with a cooked pistol, unless we should allow him rest.

Ballantrae would have fought it out, I believe; but I prevailed with him the other way; and we made a stop

and ate a meal. It seemed to benefit Grady little; he was in the rear again at once, growling and bemoaning his

lot; and at last, by some carelessness, not having followed properly in our tracks, stumbled into a deep part of

the slough where it was mostly water, gave some very dreadful screams, and before we could come to his aid

had sunk along with his booty. His fate, and above all these screams of his, appalled us to the soul; yet it was

on the whole a fortunate circumstance and the means of our deliverance, for it moved Dutton to mount into a

tree, whence he was able to perceive and to show me, who had climbed after him, a high piece of the wood,

which was a landmark for the path. He went forward the more carelessly, I must suppose; for presently we

saw him sink a little down, draw up his feet and sink again, and so twice. Then he turned his face to us, pretty

Dutton broke out into the most violent oaths, sinking a little lower as he did, so that the mud was nearly to his

waist, and plucking a pistol from his belt, "Help me," he cries, "or die and be damned to you!"

"Nay," says Ballantrae, "I did but jest. I am coming." And he set down his own packet and Dutton's, which he

was then carrying. "Do not venture near till we see if you are needed," said he to me, and went forward alone

to where the man was bogged. He was quiet now, though he still held the pistol; and the marks of terror in his

Ballantrae was now got close up. "Keep still," says he, and seemed to consider; and then, "Reach out both

Dutton laid down his pistol, and so watery was the top surface that it went clear out of sight; with an oath he

stooped to snatch it; and as he did so, Ballantrae leaned forth and stabbed him between the shoulders. Up

went his hands over his head I know not whether with the pain or to ward himself; and the next moment he

Ballantrae was already over the ankles; but he plucked himself out, and came back to me, where I stood with

my knees smiting one another. "The devil take you, Francis!" says he. "I believe you are a halfhearted

fellow, after all. I have only done justice on a pirate. And here we are quite clear of the SARAH! Who shall

I assured him he did me injustice; but my sense of humanity was so much affected by the horridness of the

"Come," said he, "you must be more resolved. The need for this fellow ceased when he had shown you where

the path ran; and you cannot deny I would have been daft to let slip so fair an opportunity."

I could not deny but he was right in principle; nor yet could I refrain from shedding tears, of which I think no

man of valour need have been ashamed; and it was not until I had a share of the rum that I was able to

proceed. I repeat, I am far from ashamed of my generous emotion; mercy is honourable in the warrior; and

yet I cannot altogether censure Ballantrae, whose step was really fortunate, as we struck the path without

further misadventure, and the same night, about sundown, came to the edge of the morass.

We were too weary to seek far; on some dry sands, still warm with the day's sun, and close under a wood of

We awaked the next morning very early, and began with a sullen spirit a conversation that came near to end

in blows. We were now cast on shore in the southern provinces, thousands of miles from any French

settlement; a dreadful journey and a thousand perils lay in front of us; and sure, if there was ever need for

amity, it was in such an hour. I must suppose that Ballantrae had suffered in his sense of what is truly polite;

indeed, and there is nothing strange in the idea, after the seawolves we had consorted with so long; and as

for myself, he fubbed me off unhandsomely, and any gentleman would have resented his behaviour.

I told him in what light I saw his conduct; he walked a little off, I following to upbraid him; and at last he

"Frank," says he, "you know what we swore; and yet there is no oath invented would induce me to swallow

such expressions, if I did not regard you with sincere affection. It is impossible you should doubt me there: I

have given proofs. Dutton I had to take, because he knew the pass, and Grady because Dutton would not

move without him; but what call was there to carry you along? You are a perpetual danger to me with your

cursed Irish tongue. By rights you should now be in irons in the cruiser. And you quarrel with me like a baby

I considered this one of the most unhandsome speeches ever made; and indeed to this day I can scarce

reconcile it to my notion of a gentleman that was my friend. I retorted upon him with his Scotch accent, of

which he had not so much as some, but enough to be very barbarous and disgusting, as I told him plainly; and

We had got some way off upon the sand. The place where we had slept, with the packets lying undone and

the money scattered openly, was now between us and the pines; and it was out of these the stranger must have

come. There he was at least, a great hulking fellow of the country, with a broad axe on his shoulder, looking

openmouthed, now at the treasure, which was just at his feet, and now at our disputation, in which we had

gone far enough to have weapons in our hands. We had no sooner observed him than he found his legs and

This was no scene to put our minds at rest: a couple of armed men in seaclothes found quarrelling over a

treasure, not many miles from where a pirate had been captured here was enough to bring the whole

country about our ears. The quarrel was not even made up; it was blotted from our minds; and we got our

packets together in the twinkling of an eye, and made off, running with the best will in the world. But the

trouble was, we did not know in what direction, and must continually return upon our steps. Ballantrae had

indeed collected what he could from Dutton; but it's hard to travel upon hearsay; and the estuary, which

spreads into a vast irregular harbour, turned us off upon every side with a new stretch of water.

We were near beside ourselves, and already quite spent with running, when, coming to the top of a dune, we

saw we were again cut off by another ramification of the bay. This was a creek, however, very different from

those that had arrested us before; being set in rocks, and so precipitously deep that a small vessel was able to

lie alongside, made fast with a hawser; and her crew had laid a plank to the shore. Here they had lighted a

fire, and were sitting at their meal. As for the vessel herself, she was one of those they build in the Bermudas.

The love of gold and the great hatred that everybody has to pirates were motives of the most influential, and

would certainly raise the country in our pursuit. Besides, it was now plain we were on some sort of straggling

peninsula, like the fingers of a hand; and the wrist, or passage to the mainland, which we should have taken at

the first, was by this time not improbably secured. These considerations put us on a bolder counsel. For as

long as we dared, looking every moment to hear sounds of the chase, we lay among some bushes on the top

of the dune; and having by this means secured a little breath and recomposed our appearance, we strolled

down at last, with a great affectation of carelessness, to the party by the fire.

It was a trader and his negroes, belonging to Albany, in the province of New York, and now on the way home

from the Indies with a cargo; his name I cannot recall. We were amazed to learn he had put in here from

terror of the SARAH; for we had no thought our exploits had been so notorious. As soon as the Albanian

heard she had been taken the day before, he jumped to his feet, gave us a cup of spirits for our good news,

and sent big negroes to get sail on the Bermudan. On our side, we profited by the dram to become more

confidential, and at last offered ourselves as passengers. He looked askance at our tarry clothes and pistols,

and replied civilly enough that he had scarce accommodation for himself; nor could either our prayers or our

"I see, you think ill of us," says Ballantrae, "but I will show you how well we think of you by telling you the

At this, the Albanian was plainly moved a little. He asked us many questions as to the Scotch war, which

Ballantrae very patiently answered. And then, with a wink, in a vulgar manner, "I guess you and your Prince

"Bedad, and that we did," said I. "And, my dear man, I wish you would set a new example and give us just

This I said in the Irish way, about which there is allowed to be something very engaging. It's a remarkable

thing, and a testimony to the love with which our nation is regarded, that this address scarce ever fails in a

handsome fellow. I cannot tell how often I have seen a private soldier escape the horse, or a beggar wheedle

out a good alms by a touch of the brogue. And, indeed, as soon as the Albanian had laughed at me I was

pretty much at rest. Even then, however, he made many conditions, and for one thing took away our

arms, before he suffered us aboard; which was the signal to cast off; so that in a moment after, we were

gliding down the bay with a good breeze, and blessing the name of God for our deliverance. Almost in the

mouth of the estuary, we passed the cruiser, and a little after the poor SARAH with her prize crew; and these

were both sights to make us tremble. The Bermudan seemed a very safe place to be in, and our bold stroke to

have been fortunately played, when we were thus reminded of the case of our companions. For all that, we

had only exchanged traps, jumped out of the fryingpan into the fire, ran from the yardarm to the block, and

escaped the open hostility of the manofwar to lie at the mercy of the doubtful faith of our Albanian

From many circumstances, it chanced we were safer than we could have dared to hope. The town of Albany

was at that time much concerned in contraband trade across the desert with the Indians and the French. This,

as it was highly illegal, relaxed their loyalty, and as it brought them in relation with the politest people on the

earth, divided even their sympathies. In short, they were like all the smugglers in the world, spies and agents

ready made for either party. Our Albanian, besides, was a very honest man indeed, and very greedy; and, to

crown our luck, he conceived a great delight in our society. Before we had reached the town of New York we

had come to a full agreement, that he should carry us as far as Albany upon his ship, and thence put us on a

way to pass the boundaries and join the French. For all this we were to pay at a high rate; but beggars cannot

We sailed, then, up the Hudson River, which, I protest, is a very fine stream, and put up at the "King's Arms"

in Albany. The town was full of the militia of the province, breathing slaughter against the French. Governor

Clinton was there himself, a very busy man, and, by what I could learn, very near distracted by the

factiousness of his Assembly. The Indians on both sides were on the warpath; we saw parties of them

bringing in prisoners and (what was much worse) scalps, both male and female, for which they were paid at a

fixed rate; and I assure you the sight was not encouraging. Altogether, we could scarce have come at a period

more unsuitable for our designs; our position in the chief inn was dreadfully conspicuous; our Albanian

fubbed us off with a thousand delays, and seemed upon the point of a retreat from his engagements; nothing

but peril appeared to environ the poor fugitives, and for some time we drowned our concern in a very

This, too, proved to be fortunate; and it's one of the remarks that fall to be made upon our escape, how

providentially our steps were conducted to the very end. What a humiliation to the dignity of man! My

philosophy, the extraordinary genius of Ballantrae, our valour, in which I grant that we were equal all these

might have proved insufficient without the Divine blessing on our efforts. And how true it is, as the Church

tells us, that the Truths of Religion are, after all, quite applicable even to daily affairs! At least, it was in the

course of our revelry that we made the acquaintance of a spirited youth by the name of Chew. He was one of

the most daring of the Indian traders, very well acquainted with the secret paths of the wilderness, needy,

dissolute, and, by a last good fortune, in some disgrace with his family. Him we persuaded to come to our

relief; he privately provided what was needful for our flight, and one day we slipped out of Albany, without a

To the toils and perils of this journey, it would require a pen more elegant than mine to do full justice. The

reader must conceive for himself the dreadful wilderness which we had now to thread; its thickets, swamps,

precipitous rocks, impetuous rivers, and amazing waterfalls. Among these barbarous scenes we must toil all

day, now paddling, now carrying our canoe upon our shoulders; and at night we slept about a fire, surrounded

by the howling of wolves and other savage animals. It was our design to mount the headwaters of the

Hudson, to the neighbourhood of Crown Point, where the French had a strong place in the woods, upon Lake

Champlain. But to have done this directly were too perilous; and it was accordingly gone upon by such a

labyrinth of rivers, lakes, and portages as makes my head giddy to remember. These paths were in ordinary

times entirely desert; but the country was now up, the tribes on the warpath, the woods full of Indian scouts.

Again and again we came upon these parties when we least expected, them; and one day, in particular, I shall

never forget, how, as dawn was coming in, we were suddenly surrounded by five or six of these painted

devils, uttering a very dreary sort of cry, and brandishing their hatchets. It passed off harmlessly, indeed, as

did the rest of our encounters; for Chew was well known and highly valued among the different tribes.

Indeed, he was a very gallant, respectable young man; but even with the advantage of his companionship, you

must not think these meetings were without sensible peril. To prove friendship on our part, it was needful to

draw upon our stock of rum indeed, under whatever disguise, that is the true business of the Indian trader,

to keep a travelling publichouse in the forest; and when once the braves had got their bottle of SCAURA (as

they call this beastly liquor), it behoved us to set forth and paddle for our scalps. Once they were a little

drunk, goodbye to any sense or decency; they had but the one thought, to get more SCAURA. They might

easily take it in their heads to give us chase, and had we been overtaken, I had never written these memoirs.

We were come to the most critical portion of our course, where we might equally expect to fall into the hands

of French or English, when a terrible calamity befell us. Chew was taken suddenly sick with symptoms like

those of poison, and in the course of a few hours expired in the bottom of the canoe. We thus lost at once our

guide, our interpreter, our boatman, and our passport, for he was all these in one; and found ourselves

reduced, at a blow, to the most desperate and irremediable distress. Chew, who took a great pride in his

knowledge, had indeed often lectured us on the geography; and Ballantrae, I believe, would listen. But for my

part I have always found such information highly tedious; and beyond the fact that we were now in the

country of the Adirondack Indians, and not so distant from our destination, could we but have found the way,

I was entirely ignorant. The wisdom of my course was soon the more apparent; for with all his pains,

Ballantrae was no further advanced than myself. He knew we must continue to go up one stream; then, by

way of a portage, down another; and then up a third. But you are to consider, in a mountain country, how

many streams come rolling in from every hand. And how is a gentleman, who is a perfect stranger in that part

of the world, to tell any one of them from any other? Nor was this our only trouble. We were great novices,

besides, in handling a canoe; the portages were almost beyond our strength, so that I have seen us sit down in

despair for half an hour at a time without one word; and the appearance of a single Indian, since we had now

no means of speaking to them, would have been in all probability the means of our destruction. There is

altogether some excuse if Ballantrae showed something of a grooming disposition; his habit of imputing

blame to others, quite as capable as himself, was less tolerable, and his language it was not always easy to

accept. Indeed, he had contracted on board the pirate ship a manner of address which was in a high degree

unusual between gentlemen; and now, when you might say he was in a fever, it increased upon him hugely.

The third day of these wanderings, as we were carrying the canoe upon a rocky portage, she fell, and was

entirely bilged. The portage was between two lakes, both pretty extensive; the track, such as it was, opened at

both ends upon the water, and on both hands was enclosed by the unbroken woods; and the sides of the lakes

were quite impassable with bog: so that we beheld ourselves not only condemned to go without our boat and

the greater part of our provisions, but to plunge at once into impenetrable thickets and to desert what little

guidance we still had the course of the river. Each stuck his pistols in his belt, shouldered an axe, made a

pack of his treasure and as much food as he could stagger under; and deserting the rest of our possessions,

even to our swords, which would have much embarrassed us among the woods, we set forth on this

deplorable adventure. The labours of Hercules, so finely described by Homer, were a trifle to what we now

underwent. Some parts of the forest were perfectly dense down to the ground, so that we must cut our way

like mites in a cheese. In some the bottom was full of deep swamp, and the whole wood entirely rotten. I have

leaped on a great fallen log and sunk to the knees in touchwood; I have sought to stay myself, in falling,

against what looked to be a solid trunk, and the whole thing has whiffed away at my touch like a sheet of

paper. Stumbling, falling, bogging to the knees, hewing our way, our eyes almost put out with twigs and

branches, our clothes plucked from our bodies, we laboured all day, and it is doubtful if we made two miles.

What was worse, as we could rarely get a view of the country, and were perpetually justled from our path by

obstacles, it was impossible even to have a guess in what direction we were moving.

A little before sundown, in an open place with a stream, and set about with barbarous mountains, Ballantrae

threw down his pack. "I will go no further," said he, and bade me light the fire, damning my blood in terms

I told him to try to forget he had ever been a pirate, and to remember he had been a gentleman.

"Are you mad?" he cried. "Don't cross me here! And then, shaking his fist at the hills, "To think," cries he,

"that I must leave my bones in this miserable wilderness! Would God I had died upon the scaffold like a

gentleman!" This he said ranting like an actor; and then sat biting his fingers and staring on the ground, a

I took a certain horror of the man, for I thought a soldier and a gentleman should confront his end with more

philosophy. I made him no reply, therefore, in words; and presently the evening fell so chill that I was glad,

for my own sake, to kindle a fire. And yet God knows, in such an open spot, and the country alive with

savages, the act was little short of lunacy. Ballantrae seemed never to observe me; but at last, as I was about

"I have the one," said he, with a strange voice; and then presently, "He shall pay me for all this," he added.

And when I asked him what was his brother's part in our distress, "What!" he cried, "he sits in my place, he

bears my name, he courts my wife; and I am here alone with a damned Irishman in this toothchattering

The explosion was in all ways so foreign to my friend's nature that I was daunted out of all my just

susceptibility. Sure, an offensive expression, however vivacious, appears a wonderfully small affair in

circumstances so extreme! But here there is a strange thing to be noted. He had only once before referred to

the lady with whom he was contracted. That was when we came in view of the town of New York, when he

had told me, if all had their rights, he was now in sight of his own property, for Miss Graeme enjoyed a large

estate in the province. And this was certainly a natural occasion; but now here she was named a second time;

and what is surely fit to be observed, in this very month, which was November, '47, and I BELIEVE UPON

Graeme were married. I am the least superstitious of men; but the hand of Providence is here displayed too

The next day, and the next, were passed in similar labours; Ballantrae often deciding on our course by the

spinning of a coin; and once, when I expostulated on this childishness, he had an odd remark that I have

never forgotten. "I know no better way," said he, "to express my scorn of human reason." I think it was the

third day that we found the body of a Christian, scalped and most abominably mangled, and lying in a pudder

of his blood; the birds of the desert screaming over him, as thick as flies. I cannot describe how dreadfully

this sight affected us; but it robbed me of all strength and all hope for this world. The same day, and only a

little after, we were scrambling over a part of the forest that had been burned, when Ballantrae, who was a

little ahead, ducked suddenly behind a fallen trunk. I joined him in this shelter, whence we could look abroad

without being seen ourselves; and in the bottom of the next vale, beheld a large war party of the savages

going by across our line. There might be the value of a weak battalion present; all naked to the waist, blacked

with grease and soot, and painted with white lead and vermilion, according to their beastly habits. They went

one behind another like a string of geese, and at a quickish trot; so that they took but a little while to rattle by,

and disappear again among the woods. Yet I suppose we endured a greater agony of hesitation and suspense

in these few minutes than goes usually to a man's whole life. Whether they were French or English Indians,

whether they desired scalps or prisoners, whether we should declare ourselves upon the chance, or lie quiet

and continue the heartbreaking business of our journey: sure, I think these were questions to have puzzled

the brains of Aristotle himself. Ballantrae turned to me with a face all wrinkled up and his teeth showing in

his mouth, like what I have read of people starving; he said no word, but his whole appearance was a kind of

"They may be of the English side," I whispered; "and think! the best we could then hope, is to begin this over

"I know I know," he said. "Yet it must come to a plunge at last." And he suddenly plucked out his coin,

shook it in his closed hands, looked at it, and then lay down with his face in the dust.

ADDITION BY MR. MACKELLAR. I drop the Chevalier's narration at this point because the couple

quarrelled and separated the same day; and the Chevalier's account of the quarrel seems to me (I must

confess) quite incompatible with the nature of either of the men. Henceforth they wandered alone, undergoing

extraordinary sufferings; until first one and then the other was picked up by a party from Fort St. Frederick.

Only two things are to be noted. And first (as most important for my purpose) that the Master, in the course

of his miseries buried his treasure, at a point never since discovered, but of which he took a drawing in his

own blood on the lining of his hat. And second, that on his coming thus penniless to the Fort, he was

welcomed like a brother by the Chevalier, who thence paid his way to France. The simplicity of Mr. Burke's

character leads him at this point to praise the Master exceedingly; to an eye more worldly wise, it would seem

it was the Chevalier alone that was to be commended. I have the more pleasure in pointing to this really very

noble trait of my esteemed correspondent, as I fear I may have wounded him immediately before. I have

refrained from comments on any of his extraordinary and (in my eyes) immoral opinions, for I know him to

be jealous of respect. But his version of the quarrel is really more than I can reproduce; for I knew the Master

myself, and a man more insusceptible of fear is not conceivable. I regret this oversight of the Chevalier's, and

all the more because the tenor of his narrative (set aside a few flourishes) strikes me as highly ingenuous.

You can guess on what part of his adventures the Colonel principally dwelled. Indeed, if we had heard it all,

it is to be thought the current of this business had been wholly altered; but the pirate ship was very gently

touched upon. Nor did I hear the Colonel to an end even of that which he was willing to disclose; for Mr.

Henry, having for some while been plunged in a brown study, rose at last from his seat and (reminding the

Colonel there were matters that he must attend to) bade me follow him immediately to the office.

Once there, he sought no longer to dissemble his concern, walking to and fro in the room with a contorted

"We have some business," he began at last; and there broke off, declared we must have wine, and sent for a

magnum of the best. This was extremely foreign to his habitudes; and what was still more so, when the wine

had come, he gulped down one glass upon another like a man careless of appearances. But the drink steadied

"You will scarce be surprised, Mackellar," says he, "when I tell you that my brother whose safety we are all

I told him I had misdoubted as much; but the time was not very fortunate, as the stock was low.

I showed him how unfortunate a time it was to divert this money from its destination; and how, by so doing,

we must lose the profit of our past economies, and plunge back the estate into the mire. I even took the liberty

to plead with him; and when he still opposed me with a shake of the head and a bitter dogged smile, my zeal

quite carried me beyond my place. "This is midsummer madness," cried I; "and I for one will be no party to

"You speak as though I did it for my pleasure," says he. "But I have a child now; and, besides, I love order;

and to say the honest truth, Mackellar, I had begun to take a pride in the estates." He gloomed for a moment.

"But what would you have?" he went on. "Nothing is mine, nothing. This day's news has knocked the bottom

out of my life. I have only the name and the shadow of things only the shadow; there is no substance in my

He looked at me with a burning eye, and seemed to repress the word upon his lips; and I repented what I had

said, for I saw that while he spoke of the estate he had still a sidethought to his marriage. And then, of a

sudden, he twitched the letter from his pocket, where it lay all crumpled, smoothed it violently on the table,

and read these words to me with a trembling tongue: "'My dear Jacob' This is how he begins!" cries he

"'My dear Jacob, I once called you so, you may remember; and you have now done the business, and flung

my heels as high as Criffel.' What do you think of that, Mackellar," says he, "from an only brother? I declare

to God I liked him very well; I was always staunch to him; and this is how he writes! But I will not sit down

under the imputation" walking to and fro "I am as good as he; I am a better man than he, I call on God to

prove it! I cannot give him all the monstrous sum he asks; he knows the estate to be incompetent; but I will

give him what I have, and it in more than he expects. I have borne all this too long. See what he writes further

on; read it for yourself: 'I know you are a niggardly dog.' A niggardly dog! I niggardly? Is that true,

Mackellar? You think it is?" I really thought he would have struck me at that. "Oh, you all think so! Well,

you shall see, and he shall see, and God shall see. If I ruin the estate and go barefoot, I shall stuff this

bloodsucker. Let him ask all all, and he shall have it! It is all his by rights. Ah!" he cried, "and I foresaw all

this, and worse, when he would not let me go." He poured out another glass of wine, and was about to carry it

to his lips, when I made so bold as to lay a finger on his arm. He stopped a moment. "You are right," said he,

I durst no longer oppose him; indeed, I was very much affected by the sight of so much disorder in a man

usually so controlled; and we sat down together, counted the money, and made it up in packets for the greater

ease of Colonel Burke, who was to be the bearer. This done, Mr. Henry returned to the hall, where he and my

A little before dawn I was called and set out with the Colonel. He would scarce have liked a less responsible

convoy, for he was a man who valued himself; nor could we afford him one more dignified, for Mr. Henry

must not appear with the freetraders. It was a very bitter morning of wind, and as we went down through the

"Sir," said I, "this is a great sum of money that your friend requires. I must suppose his necessities to be very

"We must suppose so," says he, I thought drily; but perhaps it was the cloak about his mouth.

"I am only a servant of the family," said I. "You may deal openly with me. I think we are likely to get little

"My dear man," said the Colonel, "Ballantrae is a gentleman of the most eminent natural abilities, and a man

that I admire, and that I revere, to the very ground he treads on." And then he seemed to me to pause like one

By this time we had come to the side of the creek, where the boat awaited him. "Well," said be, "I am sure I

am very much your debtor for all your civility, Mr. Whateveryournameis; and just as a last word, and

since you show so much intelligent interest, I will mention a small circumstance that may be of use to the

family. For I believe my friend omitted to mention that he has the largest pension on the Scots Fund of any

refugee in Paris; and it's the more disgraceful, sir," cries the Colonel, warming, "because there's not one dirty

He cocked his hat at me, as if I had been to blame for this partiality; then changed again into his usual

swaggering civility, shook me by the hand, and set off down to the boat, with the money under his arms, and

whistling as he went the pathetic air of SHULE AROON. It was the first time I had heard that tune; I was to

hear it again, words and all, as you shall learn, but I remember how that little stave of it ran in my head after

the freetraders had bade him "Wheesht, in the deil's name," and the grating of the oars had taken its place, and

I stood and watched the dawn creeping on the sea, and the boat drawing away, and the lugger lying with her

The gap made in our money was a sore embarrassment, and, among other consequences, it had this: that I

must ride to Edinburgh, and there raise a new loan on very questionable terms to keep the old afloat; and was

What passed in the interval I had none to tell me, but I found Mrs. Henry, upon my return, much changed in

her demeanour. The old talks with my lord for the most part pretermitted; a certain deprecation visible

towards her husband, to whom I thought she addressed herself more often; and, for one thing, she was now

greatly wrapped up in Miss Katharine. You would think the change was agreeable to Mr. Henry; no such

matter! To the contrary, every circumstance of alteration was a stab to him; he read in each the avowal of her

truant fancies. That constancy to the Master of which she was proud while she supposed him dead, she had to

blush for now she knew he was alive, and these blushes were the hated spring of her new conduct. I am to

conceal no truth; and I will here say plainly, I think this was the period in which Mr. Henry showed the worst.

He contained himself, indeed, in public; but there was a deepseated irritation visible underneath. With me,

from whom he had less concealment, he was often grossly unjust, and even for his wife he would sometimes

have a sharp retort: perhaps when she had ruffled him with some unwonted kindness; perhaps upon no

tangible occasion, the mere habitual tenor of the man's annoyance bursting spontaneously forth. When he

would thus forget himself (a thing so strangely out of keeping with the terms of their relation), there went a

shook through the whole company, and the pair would look upon each other in a kind of pained amazement.

All the time, too, while he was injuring himself by this defect of temper, he was hurting his position by a

silence, of which I scarce know whether to say it was the child of generosity or pride. The freetraders came

again and again, bringing messengers from the Master, and none departed emptyhanded. I never durst

reason with Mr. Henry; he gave what was asked of him in a kind of noble rage. Perhaps because he knew he

was by nature inclining to the parsimonious, he took a backforemost pleasure in the recklessness with which

he supplied his brother's exigence. Perhaps the falsity of the position would have spurred a humbler man into

the same excess. But the estate (if I may say so) groaned under it; our daily expenses were shorn lower and

lower; the stables were emptied, all but four roadsters; servants were discharged, which raised a dreadful

murmuring in the country, and heated up the old disfavour upon Mr. Henry; and at last the yearly visit to

This was in 1756. You are to suppose that for seven years this bloodsucker had been drawing the life's blood

from Durrisdeer, and that all this time my patron had held his peace. It was an effect of devilish malice in the

Master that he addressed Mr. Henry alone upon the matter of his demands, and there was never a word to my

lord. The family had looked on, wondering at our economies. They had lamented, I have no doubt, that my

patron had become so great a miser a fault always despicable, but in the young abhorrent, and Mr. Henry

was not yet thirty years of age. Still, he had managed the business of Durrisdeer almost from a boy; and they

bore with these changes in a silence as proud and bitter as his own, until the copingstone of the Edinburgh

At this time I believe my patron and his wife were rarely together, save at meals. Immediately on the back of

Colonel Burke's announcement Mrs. Henry made palpable advances; you might say she had laid a sort of

timid court to her husband, different, indeed, from her former manner of unconcern and distance. I never had

the heart to blame Mr. Henry because he recoiled from these advances; nor yet to censure the wife, when she

was cut to the quick by their rejection. But the result was an entire estrangement, so that (as I say) they rarely

spoke, except at meals. Even the matter of the Edinburgh visit was first broached at table, and it chanced that

Mrs. Henry was that day ailing and querulous. She had no sooner understood her husband's meaning than the

"At last," she cried, "this is too much! Heaven knows what pleasure I have in my life, that I should be denied

my only consolation. These shameful proclivities must be trod down; we are already a mark and an eyesore in

"That is all mine, madam, by marriage," he snarled, and instantly left the room.

My old lord threw up his hands to Heaven, and he and his daughter, withdrawing to the chimney, gave me a

broad hint to be gone. I found Mr. Henry in his usual retreat, the steward's room, perched on the end of the

"Mr. Henry," said I, "you do yourself too much injustice, and it is time this should cease."

"Oh!" cries he, "nobody minds here. They think it only natural. I have shameful proclivities. I am a niggardly

dog," and he drove his knife up to the hilt. "But I will show that fellow," he cried with an oath, "I will show

I thought he wanted help, and I should give it him, willynilly; and no sooner was Mrs. Henry gone to her

She openly showed her wonder. "What do you want with me, Mr. Mackellar?" said she.

"The Lord knows, madam," says I, "I have never troubled you before with any freedoms; but this thing lies

too hard upon my conscience, and it will out. Is it possible that two people can be so blind as you and my

lord? and have lived all these years with a noble gentleman like Mr. Henry, and understand so little of his

"Do you not know where his money goes to? his and yours and the money for the very wine he does not

drink at table?" I went on. "To Paris to that man! Eight thousand pounds has he had of us in seven years,

"Eight thousand pounds!" she repeated. "It in impossible; the estate is not sufficient."

"God knows how we have sweated farthings to produce it," said I. "But eight thousand and sixty is the sum,

beside odd shillings. And if you can think my patron miserly after that, this shall be my last interference."

"You need say no more, Mr. Mackellar," said she. "You have done most properly in what you too modestly

call your interference. I am much to blame; you must think me indeed a very unobservant wife" (looking

upon me with a strange smile), "but I shall put this right at once. The Master was always of a very thoughtless

nature; but his heart is excellent; he is the soul of generosity. I shall write to him myself. You cannot think

"Indeed, madam, I had hoped to have pleased you," said I, for I raged to see her still thinking of the Master.

That same day (I will not say but what I watched) I had the satisfaction to see Mr. Henry come from his

wife's room in a state most unlike himself; for his face was all bloated with weeping, and yet he seemed to me

to walk upon the air. By this, I was sure his wife had made him full amends for once. "Ah," thought I to

On the morrow, as I was seated at my books, Mr. Henry came in softly behind me, took me by the shoulders,

and shook me in a manner of playfulness. "I find you are a faithless fellow after all," says he, which was his

only reference to my part; but the tone he spoke in was more to me than any eloquence of protestation. Nor

was this all I had effected; for when the next messenger came (as he did not long afterwards) from the

Master, he got nothing away with him but a letter. For some while back it had been I myself who had

conducted these affairs; Mr. Henry not setting pen to paper, and I only in the dryest and most formal terms.

But this letter I did not even see; it would scarce be pleasant reading, for Mr. Henry felt he had his wife

behind him for once, and I observed, on the day it was despatched, he had a very gratified expression.

Things went better now in the family, though it could scarce be pretended they went well. There was now at

least no misconception; there was kindness upon all sides; and I believe my patron and his wife might again

have drawn together if he could but have pocketed his pride, and she forgot (what was the ground of all) her

brooding on another man. It is wonderful how a private thought leaks out; it is wonderful to me now how we

should all have followed the current of her sentiments; and though she bore herself quietly, and had a very

even disposition, yet we should have known whenever her fancy ran to Paris. And would not any one have

thought that my disclosure must have rooted up that idol? I think there is the devil in women: all these years

passed, never a sight of the man, little enough kindness to remember (by all accounts) even while she had

him, the notion of his death intervening, his heartless rapacity laid bare to her; that all should not do, and she

must still keep the best place in her heart for this accursed fellow, is a thing to make a plain man rage. I had

never much natural sympathy for the passion of love; but this unreason in my patron's wife disgusted me

outright with the whole matter. I remember checking a maid because she sang some bairnly kickshaw while

my mind was thus engaged; and my asperity brought about my ears the enmity of all the petticoats about the

house; of which I reeked very little, but it amused Mr. Henry, who rallied me much upon our joint

unpopularity. It is strange enough (for my own mother was certainly one of the salt of the earth, and my Aunt

Dickson, who paid my fees at the University, a very notable woman), but I have never had much toleration

for the female sex, possibly not much understanding; and being far from a bold man, I have ever shunned

their company. Not only do I see no cause to regret this diffidence in myself, but have invariably remarked

the most unhappy consequences follow those who were less wise. So much I thought proper to set down, lest

I show myself unjust to Mrs. Henry. And, besides, the remark arose naturally, on a reperusal of the letter

which was the next step in these affairs, and reached me, to my sincere astonishment, by a private hand, some

Letter from Colonel BURKE (afterwards Chevalier) to MR. MACKELLAR. TROYES IN CHAMPAGNE,

My Dear Sir, You will doubtless be surprised to receive a communication from one so little known to you;

but on the occasion I had the good fortune to rencounter you at Durrisdeer, I remarked you for a young man

of a solid gravity of character: a qualification which I profess I admire and revere next to natural genius or the

bold chivalrous spirit of the soldier. I was, besides, interested in the noble family which you have the honour

to serve, or (to speak more by the book) to be the humble and respected friend of; and a conversation I had

the pleasure to have with you very early in the morning has remained much upon my mind.

Being the other day in Paris, on a visit from this famous city, where I am in garrison, I took occasion to

inquire your name (which I profess I had forgot) at my friend, the Master of B.; and a fair opportunity

The Master of B. (when we had last some talk of him together) was in receipt, as I think I then told you, of a

highly advantageous pension on the Scots Fund. He next received a company, and was soon after advanced to

a regiment of his own. My dear sir, I do not offer to explain this circumstance; any more than why I myself,

who have rid at the right hand of Princes, should be fubbed off with a pair of colours and sent to rot in a hole

at the bottom of the province. Accustomed as I am to Courts, I cannot but feel it is no atmosphere for a plain

soldier; and I could never hope to advance by similar means, even could I stoop to the endeavour. But our

friend has a particular aptitude to succeed by the means of ladies; and if all be true that I have heard, he

enjoyed a remarkable protection. It is like this turned against him; for when I had the honour to shake him by

the hand, he was but newly released from the Bastille, where he had been cast on a sealed letter; and, though

now released, has both lost his regiment and his pension. My dear sir, the loyalty of a plain Irishman will

ultimately succeed in the place of craft; as I am sure a gentleman of your probity will agree.

Now, sir, the Master is a man whose genius I admire beyond expression, and, besides, he is my friend; but I

thought a little word of this revolution in his fortunes would not come amiss, for, in my opinion, the man's

desperate. He spoke, when I saw him, of a trip to India (whither I am myself in some hope of accompanying

my illustrious countryman, Mr. Lally); but for this he would require (as I understood) more money than was

readily at his command. You may have heard a military proverb: that it is a good thing to make a bridge of

gold to a flying enemy? I trust you will take my meaning and I subscribe myself, with proper respects to my

This missive I carried at once to Mr. Henry; and I think there was but the one thought between the two of us:

that it had come a week too late. I made haste to send an answer to Colonel Burke, in which I begged him, if

he should see the Master, to assure him his next messenger would be attended to. But with all my haste I was

not in time to avert what was impending; the arrow had been drawn, it must now fly. I could almost doubt the

power of Providence (and certainly His will) to stay the issue of events; and it is a strange thought, how many

of us had been storing up the elements of this catastrophe, for how long a time, and with how blind an

From the coming of the Colonel's letter, I had a spyglass in my room, began to drop questions to the tenant

folk, and as there was no great secrecy observed, and the freetrade (in our part) went by force as much as

stealth, I had soon got together a knowledge of the signals in use, and knew pretty well to an hour when any

messenger might be expected. I say, I questioned the tenants; for with the traders themselves, desperate

blades that went habitually armed, I could never bring myself to meddle willingly. Indeed, by what proved in

the sequel an unhappy chance, I was an object of scorn to some of these braggadocios; who had not only

gratified me with a nickname, but catching me one night upon a bypath, and being all (as they would have

said) somewhat merry, had caused me to dance for their diversion. The method employed was that of cruelly

chipping at my toes with naked cutlasses, shouting at the same time "SquareToes"; and though they did me

no bodily mischief, I was none the less deplorably affected, and was indeed for several days confined to my

It happened on the afternoon of November 7th, in this same unfortunate year, that I espied, during my walk,

the smoke of a beacon fire upon the Muckleross. It was drawing near time for my return; but the uneasiness

upon my spirits was that day so great that I must burst through the thickets to the edge of what they call the

Craig Head. The sun was already down, but there was still a broad light in the west, which showed me some

of the smugglers treading out their signal fire upon the Ross, and in the bay the lugger lying with her sails

brailed up. She was plainly but new come to anchor, and yet the skiff was already lowered and pulling for the

landingplace at the end of the long shrubbery. And this I knew could signify but one thing, the coming of a

I laid aside the remainder of my terrors, clambered down the brae a place I had never ventured through

before, and was hid among the shoreside thickets in time to see the boat touch. Captain Crail himself was

steering, a thing not usual; by his side there sat a passenger; and the men gave way with difficulty, being

hampered with near upon half a dozen portmanteaus, great and small. But the business of landing was briskly

carried through; and presently the baggage was all tumbled on shore, the boat on its return voyage to the

lugger, and the passenger standing alone upon the point of rock, a tall slender figure of a gentleman, habited

in black, with a sword by his side and a walkingcane upon his wrist. As he so stood, he waved the cane to

Captain Crail by way of salutation, with something both of grace and mockery that wrote the gesture deeply

No sooner was the boat away with my sworn enemies than I took a sort of half courage, came forth to the

margin of the thicket, and there halted again, my mind being greatly pulled about between natural diffidence

and a dark foreboding of the truth. Indeed, I might have stood there swithering all night, had not the stranger

turned, spied me through the mists, which were beginning to fall, and waved and cried on me to draw near. I

"Here, my good man," said he, in the English accent, "there are some things for Durrisdeer."

I was now near enough to see him, a very handsome figure and countenance, swarthy, lean, long, with a

quick, alert, black look, as of one who was a fighter, and accustomed to command; upon one cheek he had a

mole, not unbecoming; a large diamond sparkled on his hand; his clothes, although of the one hue, were of a

French and foppish design; his ruffles, which he wore longer than common, of exquisite lace; and I wondered

the more to see him in such a guise when he was but newly landed from a dirty smuggling lugger. At the

same time he had a better look at me, toised me a second time sharply, and then smiled.

"I wager, my friend," says he, "that I know both your name and your nickname. I divined these very clothes

"Oh,"' says he, "you need not be afraid of me. I bear no malice for your tedious letters; and it is my purpose to

employ you a good deal. You may call me Mr. Bally: it is the name I have assumed; or rather (since I am

addressing so great a precision) it is so I have curtailed my own. Come now, pick up that and that"

indicating two of the portmanteaus. "That will be as much as you are fit to bear, and the rest can very well

His tone was so cutting that I managed to do as he bid by a sort of instinct, my mind being all the time quite

lost. No sooner had I picked up the portmanteaus than he turned his back and marched off through the long

shrubbery, where it began already to be dusk, for the wood is thick and evergreen. I followed behind, loaded

almost to the dust, though I profess I was not conscious of the burthen; being swallowed up in the

On a sudden I set the portmanteaus to the ground and halted. He turned and looked back at me.

"You will do me the justice to observe," says he, "I have made no secret with the astute Mackellar."

"And in the name of God," cries I, "what brings you here? Go back, while it is yet time."

"I thank you," said he. "Your master has chosen this way, and not I; but since he has made the choice, he (and

you also) must abide by the result. And now pick up these things of mine, which you have set down in a very

But I had no thought now of obedience; I came straight up to him. "If nothing will move you to go back,"

said I; "though, sure, under all the circumstances, any Christian or even any gentleman would scruple to go

"If nothing will move you to go back," I continued, "there are still some decencies to be observed. Wait here

with your baggage, and I will go forward and prepare your family. Your father is an old man; and . . . " I

"Truly," said he, "this Mackellar improves upon acquaintance. But look you here, my man, and understand it

once for all you waste your breath upon me, and I go my own way with inevitable motion."

And I turned and took to my heels for Durrisdeer. He clutched at me and cried out angrily, and then I believe

I heard him laugh, and then I am certain he pursued me for a step or two, and (I suppose) desisted. One thing

at least is sure, that I came but a few minutes later to the door of the great house, nearly strangled for the lack

of breath, but quite alone. Straight up the stair I ran, and burst into the hall, and stopped before the family

without the power of speech; but I must have carried my story in my looks, for they rose out of their places

"My son?" cried my lord. "Imprudent, imprudent boy! Oh, could he not stay where he was safe!"

So we went out together, he and I, without another word from any one; and in the midst of the gravelled plot

encountered the Master strolling up, whistling as he came, and beating the air with his cane. There was still

"James," says Mr. Henry, "for God's sake, call me by my name. I will not pretend that I am glad to see you;

"Or in MY house? or YOURS?" says the Master. "Which were you about to say? But this is an old sore, and

we need not rub it. If you would not share with me in Paris, I hope you will yet scarce deny your elder brother

"That is very idle speech," replied Mr. Henry. "And you understand the power of your position excellently

"Why, I believe I do," said the other with a little laugh. And this, though they had never touched hands, was

(as we may say) the end of the brothers' meeting; for at this the Master turned to me and bade me fetch his

I, on my side, turned to Mr. Henry for a confirmation; perhaps with some defiance.

"As long as the Master is here, Mr. Mackellar, you will very much oblige me by regarding his wishes as you

would my own," says Mr. Henry. "We are constantly troubling you: will you be so good as send one of the

If this speech were anything at all, it was surely a welldeserved reproof upon the stranger; and yet, so

"And shall we be common enough to say 'Sneck up'?" inquires he softly, looking upon me sideways.

Had a kingdom depended on the act, I could not have trusted myself in words; even to call a servant was

beyond me; I had rather serve the man myself than speak; and I turned away in silence and went into the long

shrubbery, with a heart full of anger and despair. It was dark under the trees, and I walked before me and

forgot what business I was come upon, till I near broke my shin on the portmanteaus. Then it was that I

remarked a strange particular; for whereas I had before carried both and scarce observed it, it was now as

much as I could do to manage one. And this, as it forced me to make two journeys, kept me the longer from

When I got there, the business of welcome was over long ago; the company was already at supper; and by an

oversight that cut me to the quick, my place had been forgotten. I had seen one side of the Master's return;

now I was to see the other. It was he who first remarked my coming in and standing back (as I did) in some

"And if I have not got the good Mackellar's place!" cries he. "John, lay another for Mr. Bally; I protest he will

I could scarce credit my ears, nor yet my senses, when he took me by the shoulders and thrust me, laughing,

into my own place such an affectionate playfulness was in his voice. And while John laid the fresh place

for him (a thing on which he still insisted), he went and leaned on his father's chair and looked down upon

him, and the old man turned about and looked upwards on his son, with such a pleasant mutual tenderness

Yet all was of a piece. Never a harsh word fell from him, never a sneer showed upon his lip. He had laid

aside even his cutting English accent, and spoke with the kindly Scots' tongue, that set a value on affectionate

words; and though his manners had a graceful elegance mighty foreign to our ways in Durrisdeer, it was still

a homely courtliness, that did not shame but flattered us. All that, he did throughout the meal, indeed,

drinking wine with me with a notable respect, turning about for a pleasant word with John, fondling his

father's hand, breaking into little merry tales of his adventures, calling up the past with happy reference all

he did was so becoming, and himself so handsome, that I could scarce wonder if my lord and Mrs. Henry sat

about the board with radiant faces, or if John waited behind with dropping tears.

"It is my way now," she replied: which was notoriously false, "and I will give you a goodnight, James, and a

Poor Mr. Henry, who had made rather a heavy figure through the meal, was more concerned than ever;

pleased to see his wife withdraw, and yet half displeased, as he thought upon the cause of it; and the next

On my part, I thought I was now one too many; and was stealing after Mrs. Henry, when the Master saw me.

"Now, Mr. Mackellar," says he, "I take this near on an unfriendliness. I cannot have you go: this is to make a

stranger of the prodigal son; and let me remind you where in his own father's house! Come, sit ye down,

"Ay, ay, Mr. Mackellar," says my lord, "we must not make a stranger either of him or you. I have been telling

my son," he added, his voice brightening as usual on the word, "how much we valued all your friendly

So I sat there, silent, till my usual hour; and might have been almost deceived in the man's nature but for one

passage, in which his perfidy appeared too plain. Here was the passage; of which, after what he knows of the

brothers' meeting, the reader shall consider for himself. Mr. Henry sitting somewhat dully, in spite of his best

endeavours to carry things before my lord, up jumps the Master, passes about the board, and claps his brother

"Come, come, HAIRRY LAD," says he, with a broad accent such as they must have used together when they

were boys, "you must not be downcast because your brother has come home. All's yours, that's sure enough,

and little I grudge it you. Neither must you grudge me my place beside my father's fire."

"And that is too true, Henry," says my old lord with a little frown, a thing rare with him. "You have been the

elder brother of the parable in the good sense; you must be careful of the other."

"Who puts you in the wrong?" cried my lord, I thought very tartly for so mild a man. "You have earned my

gratitude and your brother's many thousand times: you may count on its endurance; and let that suffice."

"Ay, Harry, that you may," said the Master; and I thought Mr. Henry looked at him with a kind of wildness in

On all the miserable business that now followed, I have four questions that I asked myself often at the time

and ask myself still: Was the man moved by a particular sentiment against Mr. Henry? or by what he

thought to be his interest? or by a mere delight in cruelty such as cats display and theologians tell us of the

devil? or by what he would have called love? My common opinion halts among the three first; but perhaps

there lay at the spring of his behaviour an element of all. As thus: Animosity to Mr. Henry would explain

his hateful usage of him when they were alone; the interests he came to serve would explain his very different

attitude before my lord; that and some spice of a design of gallantry, his care to stand well with Mrs. Henry;

and the pleasure of malice for itself, the pains he was continually at to mingle and oppose these lines of

Partly because I was a very open friend to my patron, partly because in my letters to Paris I had often given

myself some freedom of remonstrance, I was included in his diabolical amusement. When I was alone with

him, he pursued me with sneers; before the family he used me with the extreme of friendly condescension.

This was not only painful in itself; not only did it put me continually in the wrong; but there was in it an

element of insult indescribable. That he should thus leave me out in his dissimulation, as though even my

testimony were too despicable to be considered, galled me to the blood. But what it was to me is not worth

notice. I make but memorandum of it here; and chiefly for this reason, that it had one good result, and gave

It was on him the burthen fell. How was he to respond to the public advances of one who never lost a chance

of gibing him in private? How was he to smile back on the deceiver and the insulter? He was condemned to

seem ungracious. He was condemned to silence. Had he been less proud, had he spoken, who would have

credited the truth? The acted calumny had done its work; my lord and Mrs. Henry were the daily witnesses of

what went on; they could have sworn in court that the Master was a model of longsuffering goodnature,

and Mr. Henry a pattern of jealousy and thanklessness. And ugly enough as these must have appeared in any

one, they seemed tenfold uglier in Mr. Henry; for who could forget that the Master lay in peril of his life, and

And Mr. Henry, who had been goaded by the man all morning, raps out: "I will not."

I give this for a specimen; but such scenes befell continually. Small wonder if Mr. Henry was blamed; small

wonder if I fretted myself into something near upon a bilious fever; nay, and at the mere recollection feel a

Sure, never in this world was a more diabolical contrivance: so perfidious, so simple, so impossible to

combat. And yet I think again, and I think always, Mrs. Henry might have road between the lines; she might

have had more knowledge of her husband's nature; after all these years of marriage she might have

commanded or captured his confidence. And my old lord, too that very watchful gentleman where was all

his observation? But, for one thing, the deceit was practised by a master hand, and might have gulled an

angel. For another (in the case of Mrs. Henry), I have observed there are no persons so far away as those who

are both married and estranged, so that they seem out of earshot or to have no common tongue. For a third

(in the case of both of these spectators), they were blinded by old ingrained predilection. And for a fourth, the

risk the Master was supposed to stand in (supposed, I say you will soon hear why) made it seem the more

ungenerous to criticise; and, keeping them in a perpetual tender solicitude about his life, blinded them the

It was during this time that I perceived most clearly the effect of manner, and was led to lament most deeply

the plainness of my own. Mr. Henry had the essence of a gentleman; when he was moved, when there was

any call of circumstance, he could play his part with dignity and spirit; but in the day's commerce (it is idle to

deny it) he fell short of the ornamental. The Master (on the other hand) had never a movement but it

commanded him. So it befell that when the one appeared gracious and the other ungracious, every trick of

their bodies seemed to call out confirmation. Not that alone: but the more deeply Mr. Henry floundered in his

brother's toils, the more clownish he grew; and the more the Master enjoyed his spiteful entertainment, the

more engagingly, the more smilingly, he went! So that the plot, by its own scope and progress, furthered and

It was one of the man's arts to use the peril in which (as I say) he was supposed to stand. He spoke of it to

those who loved him with a gentle pleasantry, which made it the more touching. To Mr. Henry he used it as a

cruel weapon of offence. I remember his laying his finger on the clean lozenge of the painted window one

day when we three were alone together in the hall. "Here went your lucky guinea, Jacob," said he. And when

Mr. Henry only looked upon him darkly, "Oh!" he added, "you need not look such impotent malice, my good

fly. You can be rid of your spider when you please. How long, O Lord? When are you to be wrought to the

point of a denunciation, scrupulous brother? It is one of my interests in this dreary hole. I ever loved

experiment." Still Mr. Henry only stared upon him with a grooming brow, and a changed colour; and at last

the Master broke out in a laugh and clapped him on the shoulder, calling him a sulky dog. At this my patron

leaped back with a gesture I thought very dangerous; and I must suppose the Master thought so too, for he

looked the least in the world discountenance, and I do not remember him again to have laid hands on Mr.

But though he had his peril always on his lips in the one way or the other, I thought his conduct strangely

incautious, and began to fancy the Government who had set a price upon his head was gone sound asleep.

I will not deny I was tempted with the wish to denounce him; but two thoughts withheld me: one, that if he

were thus to end his life upon an honourable scaffold, the man would be canonised for good in the minds of

his father and my patron's wife; the other, that if I was anyway mingled in the matter, Mr. Henry himself

would scarce escape some glancings of suspicion. And in the meanwhile our enemy went in and out more

than I could have thought possible, the fact that he was home again was buzzed about all the countryside,

and yet he was never stirred. Of all these somany and sodifferent persons who were acquainted with his

presence, none had the least greed as I used to say in my annoyance or the least loyalty; and the man rode

here and there fully more welcome, considering the lees of old unpopularity, than Mr. Henry and

Not but what he had a trouble of his own; and this, as it brought about the gravest consequences, I must now

relate. The reader will scarce have forgotten Jessie Broun; her way of life was much among the smuggling

party; Captain Crail himself was of her intimates; and she had early word of Mr. Bally's presence at the

house. In my opinion, she had long ceased to care two straws for the Master's person; but it was become her

habit to connect herself continually with the Master's name; that was the ground of all her playacting; and so

now, when he was back, she thought she owed it to herself to grow a haunter of the neighbourhood of

Durrisdeer. The Master could scarce go abroad but she was there in wait for him; a scandalous figure of a

woman, not often sober; hailing him wildly as "her bonny laddie," quoting pedlar's poetry, and, as I receive

the story, even seeking to weep upon his neck. I own I rubbed my hands over this persecution; but the Master,

who laid so much upon others, was himself the least patient of men. There were strange scenes enacted in the

policies. Some say he took his cane to her, and Jessie fell back upon her former weapons stones. It is

certain at least that he made a motion to Captain Crail to have the woman trepanned, and that the Captain

refused the proposition with uncommon vehemence. And the end of the matter was victory for Jessie. Money

was got together; an interview took place, in which my proud gentleman must consent to be kissed and wept

upon; and the woman was set up in a public of her own, somewhere on Solway side (but I forget where), and,

This is to look forward. After Jessie had been but a little while upon his heels, the Master comes to me one

day in the steward's office, and with more civility than usual, "Mackellar," says he, "there is a damned crazy

wench comes about here. I cannot well move in the matter myself, which brings me to you. Be so good as to

"Sir," said I, trembling a little, "you can do your own dirty errands for yourself."

Presently came Mr. Henry. "Here is news!" cried he. "It seems all is not enough, and you must add to my

"Under your kind favour, Mr. Henry," said I, "it was he that insulted me, and, as I think, grossly. But I may

have been careless of your position when I spoke; and if you think so when you know all, my dear patron,

you have but to say the word. For you I would obey in any point whatever, even to sin, God pardon me!" And

Mr. Henry smiled to himself; a grimmer smile I never witnessed. "You did exactly well," said he. "He shall

drink his Jessie Broun to the dregs." And then, spying the Master outside, he opened the window, and crying

"James," said he, when our persecutor had come in and closed the door behind him, looking at me with a

smile, as if he thought I was to be humbled, "you brought me a complaint against Mr. Mackellar, into which I

have inquired. I need not tell you I would always take his word against yours; for we are alone, and I am

going to use something of your own freedom. Mr. Mackellar is a gentleman I value; and you must contrive,

so long as you are under this roof, to bring yourself into no more collisions with one whom I will support at

any possible cost to me or mine. As for the errand upon which you came to him, you must deliver yourself

from the consequences of your own cruelty, and, none of my servants shall be at all employed in such a

The Master grew very white. He pointed at me with his finger. "I want that man discharged," he said.

"I have paid so dear already for a wicked brother," said Mr. Henry, "that I am bankrupt even of fears. You

"Let me go away," said I. "My dear patron, let me go away; I am but the beginning of fresh sorrows."

We were not long in suspense as to the nature of the new assault. Up to that hour the Master had played a

very close game with Mrs. Henry; avoiding pointedly to be alone with her, which I took at the time for an

effect of decency, but now think to be a most insidious art; meeting her, you may say, at mealtime only; and

behaving, when he did so, like an affectionate brother. Up to that hour, you may say he had scarce directly

interfered between Mr. Henry and his wife; except in so far as he had manoeuvred the one quite forth from

the good graces of the other. Now all that was to be changed; but whether really in revenge, or because he

was wearying of Durrisdeer and looked about for some diversion, who but the devil shall decide?

From that hour, at least, began the siege of Mrs. Henry; a thing so deftly carried on that I scarce know if she

was aware of it herself, and that her husband must look on in silence. The first parallel was opened (as was

made to appear) by accident. The talk fell, as it did often, on the exiles in France; so it glided to the matter of

"There is one," says the Master, "if you are curious in these matters, that has always seemed to me very

moving. The poetry is harsh; and yet, perhaps because of my situation, it has always found the way to my

heart. It is supposed to be sung, I should tell you, by an exile's sweetheart; and represents perhaps, not so

much the truth of what she is thinking, as the truth of what he hopes of her, poor soul! in these far lands."

And here the Master sighed, "I protest it is a pathetic sight when a score of rough Irish, all common sentinels,

get to this song; and you may see, by their falling tears, how it strikes home to them. It goes thus, father,"

says he, very adroitly taking my lord for his listener, "and if I cannot get to the end of it, you must think it is a

common case with us exiles." And thereupon he struck up the same air as I had heard the Colonel whistle; but

now to words, rustic indeed, yet most pathetically setting forth a poor girl's aspirations for an exiled lover; of

O, I will dye my petticoat red, With my dear boy I'll beg my bread, Though all my friends should wish me

He sang it well, even as a song; but he did better yet a performer. I have heard famous actors, when there was

not a dry eye in the Edinburgh theatre; a great wonder to behold; but no more wonderful than how the Master

played upon that little ballad, and on those who heard him, like an instrument, and seemed now upon the

point of failing, and now to conquer his distress, so that words and music seemed to pour out of his own heart

and his own past, and to be aimed directly at Mrs. Henry. And his art went further yet; for all was so

delicately touched, it seemed impossible to suspect him of the least design; and so far from making a parade

of emotion, you would have sworn he was striving to be calm. When it came to an end, we all sat silent for a

time; he had chosen the dusk of the afternoon, so that none could see his neighbour's face; but it seemed as if

we held our breathing; only my old lord cleared his throat. The first to move was the singer, who got to his

feet suddenly and softly, and went and walked softly to and fro in the low end of the hall, Mr. Henry's

customary place. We were to suppose that he there struggled down the last of his emotion; for he presently

returned and launched into a disquisition on the nature of the Irish (always so much miscalled, and whom he

defended) in his natural voice; so that, before the lights were brought, we were in the usual course of talk. But

even then, methought Mrs. Henry's face was a shade pale; and, for another thing, she withdrew almost at

The next sign was a friendship this insidious devil struck up with innocent Miss Katharine; so that they were

always together, hand in hand, or she climbing on his knee, like a pair of children. Like all his diabolical acts,

this cut in several ways. It was the last stroke to Mr. Henry, to see his own babe debauched against him; it

made him harsh with the poor innocent, which brought him still a peg lower in his wife's esteem; and (to

conclude) it was a bond of union between the lady and the Master. Under this influence, their old reserve

melted by daily stages. Presently there came walks in the long shrubbery, talks in the Belvedere, and I know

not what tender familiarity. I am sure Mrs. Henry was like many a good woman; she had a whole conscience

but perhaps by the means of a little winking. For even to so dull an observer as myself, it was plain her

kindness was of a more moving nature than the sisterly. The tones of her voice appeared more numerous; she

had a light and softness in her eye; she was more gentle with all of us, even with Mr. Henry, even with

To look on at this, what a torment it was for Mr. Henry! And yet it brought our ultimate deliverance, as I am

The purport of the Master's stay was no more noble (gild it as they might) than to wring money out. He had

some design of a fortune in the French Indies, as the Chevalier wrote me; and it was the sum required for this

that he came seeking. For the rest of the family it spelled ruin; but my lord, in his incredible partiality, pushed

ever for the granting. The family was now so narrowed down (indeed, there were no more of them than just

the father and the two sons) that it was possible to break the entail and alienate a piece of land. And to this, at

first by hints, and then by open pressure, Mr. Henry was brought to consent. He never would have done so, I

am very well assured, but for the weight of the distress under which he laboured. But for his passionate

eagerness to see his brother gone, he would not thus have broken with his own sentiment and the traditions of

his house. And even so, he sold them his consent at a dear rate, speaking for once openly, and holding the

"You will observe," he said, "this is an injustice to my son, if ever I have one."

"God knows!" says Mr. Henry. "And considering the cruel falseness of the position in which I stand to my

brother, and that you, my lord, are my father, and have the right to command me, I set my hand to this paper.

But one thing I will say first: I have been ungenerously pushed, and when next, my lord, you are tempted to

compare your sons, I call on you to remember what I have done and what he has done. Acts are the fair test."

My lord was the most uneasy man I ever saw; even in his old face the blood came up. "I think this is not a

very wisely chosen moment, Henry, for complaints," said he. "This takes away from the merit of your

"Do not deceive yourself, my lord," said Mr. Henry. "This injustice is not done from generosity to him, but in

"There is no one but Mackellar here," said Mr. Henry; "he is my friend. And, my lord, as you make him no

stranger to your frequent blame, it were hard if I must keep him one to a thing so rare as my defence."

Almost I believe my lord would have rescinded his decision; but the Master was on the watch.

"Ah! Henry, Henry," says he, "you are the best of us still. Rugged and true! Ah! man, I wish I was as good."

And at that instance of his favourite's generosity my lord desisted from his hesitation, and the deed was

As soon as it could he brought about, the land of Ochterhall was sold for much below its value, and the

money paid over to our leech and sent by some private carriage into France. Or so he said; though I have

suspected since it did not go so far. And now here was all the man's business brought to a successful head,

and his pockets once more bulging with our gold; and yet the point for which we had consented to this

sacrifice was still denied us, and the visitor still lingered on at Durrisdeer. Whether in malice, or because the

time was not yet come for his adventure to the Indies, or because he had hopes of his design on Mrs. Henry,

or from the orders of the Government, who shall say? but linger he did, and that for weeks.

You will observe I say: from the orders of Government; for about this time the man's disreputable secret

The first hint I had was from a tenant, who commented on the Master's stay, and yet more on his security; for

this tenant was a Jacobitish sympathiser, and had lost a son at Culloden, which gave him the more critical

eye. "There is one thing," said he, "that I cannot but think strange; and that is how he got to Cockermouth."

"To Cockermouth?" said I, with a sudden memory of my first wonder on beholding the man disembark so

"Why, yes," says the tenant, "it was there he was picked up by Captain Crail. You thought he had come from

I turned this news a little in my head, and then carried it to Mr. Henry. "Here is an odd circumstance," said I,

"No, sir," said I, "but think again! Does not this smack a little of some Government connivance? You know

"Stop," said Mr. Henry. "Let me think of this." And as he thought, there came that grim smile upon his face

that was a little like the Master's. "Give me paper," said he. And he sat without another word and wrote to a

gentleman of his acquaintance I will name no unnecessary names, but he was one in a high place. This

letter I despatched by the only hand I could depend upon in such a case Macconochie's; and the old man

rode hard, for he was back with the reply before even my eagerness had ventured to expect him. Again, as he

"This is the best you have done for me yet, Mackellar," says he. "With this in my hand I will give him a shog.

At dinner accordingly Mr. Henry proposed some very public appearance for the Master; and my lord, as he

"Oh!" says Mr. Henry, very easily, "you need no longer keep this up with me. I am as much in the secret as

"In the secret?" says my lord. "What do you mean, Henry? I give you my word, I am in no secret from which

The Master had changed countenance, and I saw he was struck in a joint of his harness.

"How?" says Mr. Henry, turning to him with a huge appearance of surprise. "I see you serve your masters

very faithfully; but I had thought you would have been humane enough to set your father's mind at rest."

"What are you talking of? I refuse to have my business publicly discussed. I order this to cease," cries the

Master very foolishly and passionately, and indeed more like a child than a man.

"So much discretion was not looked for at your hands, I can assure you," continued Mr. Henry. "For see what

my correspondent writes" unfolding the paper "'It is, of course, in the interests both of the Government

and the gentleman whom we may perhaps best continue to call Mr. Bally, to keep this understanding secret;

but it was never meant his own family should continue to endure the suspense you paint so feelingly; and I

am pleased mine should be the hand to set these fears at rest. Mr. Bally is as safe in Great Britain as

"Is this possible?" cries my lord, looking at his son, with a great deal of wonder and still more of suspicion in

"My dear father," says the Master, already much recovered. "I am overjoyed that this may be disclosed. My

own instructions, direct from London, bore a very contrary sense, and I was charged to keep the indulgence

secret from every one, yourself not excepted, and indeed yourself expressly named as I can show in black

and white unless I have destroyed the letter. They must have changed their mind very swiftly, for the whole

matter is still quite fresh; or rather, Henry's correspondent must have misconceived that part, as he seems to

have misconceived the rest. To tell you the truth, sir," he continued, getting visibly more easy, "I had

supposed this unexplained favour to a rebel was the effect of some application from yourself; and the

injunction to secrecy among my family the result of a desire on your part to conceal your kindness. Hence I

was the more careful to obey orders. It remains now to guess by what other channel indulgence can have

flowed on so notorious an offender as myself; for I do not think your son need defend himself from what

seems hinted at in Henry's letter. I have never yet heard of a Durrisdeer who was a turncoat or a spy," says he,

And so it seemed he had swum out of this danger unharmed; but this was to reckon without a blunder he had

made, and without the pertinacity of Mr. Henry, who was now to show he had something of his brother's

"It is recent," says the Master, with a fair show of stoutness and yet not without a quaver.

"Is it so recent as that?" asks Mr. Henry, like a man a little puzzled, and spreading his letter forth again.

In all the letter there was no word as to the date; but how was the Master to know that?

"It seemed to come late enough for me," says he, with a laugh. And at the sound of that laugh, which rang

false, like a cracked bell, my lord looked at him again across the table, and I saw his old lips draw together

"No," said Mr. Henry, still glancing on his letter, "but I remember your expression. You said it was very

And here we had a proof of our victory, and the strongest instance yet of my lord's incredible indulgence; for

"I think, Henry," says he, with a kind of pitiful eagerness, "I think we need dispute no more. We are all

rejoiced at last to find your brother safe; we are all at one on that; and, as grateful subjects, we can do no less

Thus was the Master extricated; but at least he had been put to his defence, he had come lamely out, and the

attraction of his personal danger was now publicly plucked away from him. My lord, in his heart of hearts,

now knew his favourite to be a Government spy; and Mrs. Henry (however she explained the tale) was

notably cold in her behaviour to the discredited hero of romance. Thus in the best fabric of duplicity, there is

some weak point, if you can strike it, which will loosen all; and if, by this fortunate stroke, we had not shaken

And yet at the time we seemed to have accomplished nothing. Before a day or two he had wiped off the

illresults of his discomfiture, and, to all appearance, stood as high as ever. As for my Lord Durrisdeer, he

was sunk in parental partiality; it was not so much love, which should be an active quality, as an apathy and

torpor of his other powers; and forgiveness (so to misapply a noble word) flowed from him in sheer

weakness, like the tears of senility. Mrs. Henry's was a different case; and Heaven alone knows what he

found to say to her, or how he persuaded her from her contempt. It is one of the worst things of sentiment,

that the voice grows to be more important than the words, and the speaker than that which is spoken. But

some excuse the Master must have found, or perhaps he had even struck upon some art to wrest this exposure

to his own advantage; for after a time of coldness, it seemed as if things went worse than ever between him

and Mrs. Henry. They were then constantly together. I would not be thought to cut one shadow of blame,

beyond what is due to a halfwilful blindness, on that unfortunate lady; but I do think, in these last days, she

was playing very near the fire; and whether I be wrong or not in that, one thing is sure and quite sufficient:

Mr. Henry thought so. The poor gentleman sat for days in my room, so great a picture of distress that I could

never venture to address him; yet it is to be thought he found some comfort even in my presence and the

knowledge of my sympathy. There were times, too, when we talked, and a strange manner of talk it was;

there was never a person named, nor an individual circumstance referred to; yet we had the same matter in

our minds, and we were each aware of it. It is a strange art that can thus be practised; to talk for hours of a

thing, and never name nor yet so much as hint at it. And I remember I wondered if it was by some such

natural skill that the Master made love to Mrs. Henry all day long (as he manifestly did), yet never startled

To show how far affairs had gone with Mr. Henry, I will give some words of his, uttered (as I have cause not

to forget) upon the 26th of February, 1757. It was unseasonable weather, a cast back into Winter: windless,

bitter cold, the world all white with rime, the sky low and gray . the sea black and silent like a quarryhole.

Mr. Henry sat close by the fire, and debated (as was now common with him) whether "a man" should "do

things," whether "interference was wise," and the like general propositions, which each of us particularly

applied. I was by the window, looking out, when there passed below me the Master, Mrs. Henry, and Miss

Katharine, that now constant trio. The child was running to and fro, delighted with the frost; the Master spoke

close in the lady's ear with what seemed (even from so far) a devilish grace of insinuation; and she on her part

looked on the ground like a person lost in listening. I broke out of my reserve.

"Mackellar, Mackellar," said he, "you do not see the weakness of my ground. I can carry no such base

thoughts to any one to my father least of all; that would be to fall into the bottom of his scorn. The

weakness of my ground," he continued, "lies in myself, that I am not one who engages love. I have their

gratitude, they all tell me that; I have a rich estate of it! But I am not present in their minds; they are moved

neither to think with me nor to think for me. There is my loss!" He got to his feet, and trod down the fire.

"But some method must be found, Mackellar," said he, looking at me suddenly over his shoulder; "some way

must be found. I am a man of a great deal of patience far too much far too much. I begin to despise

myself. And yet, sure, never was a man involved in such a toil!" He fell back to his brooding.

"I am far past anger now," says he, which had so little coherency with my own observation that I let both fall.

On the evening of the interview referred to, the Master went abroad; he was abroad a great deal of the next

day also, that fatal 27th; but where he went, or what he did, we never concerned ourselves to ask until next

day. If we had done so, and by any chance found out, it might have changed all. But as all we did was done in

ignorance, and should be so judged, I shall so narrate these passages as they appeared to us in the moment of

their birth, and reserve all that I since discovered for the time of its discovery. For I have now come to one of

the dark parts of my narrative, and must engage the reader's indulgence for my patron.

All the 27th that rigorous weather endured: a stifling cold; the folk passing about like smoking chimneys; the

wide hearth in the hall piled high with fuel; some of the spring birds that had already blundered north into our

neighbourhood, besieging the windows of the house or trotting on the frozen turf like things distracted. About

noon there came a blink of sunshine, showing a very pretty, wintry, frosty landscape of white hills and

woods, with Crail's lugger waiting for a wind under the Craig Head, and the smoke mounting straight into the

air from every farm and cottage. With the coming of night, the haze closed in overhead; it fell dark and still

and starless, and exceeding cold: a night the most unseasonable, fit for strange events.

Mrs. Henry withdrew, as was now her custom, very early. We had set ourselves of late to pass the evening

with a game of cards; another mark that our visitor was wearying mightily of the life at Durrisdeer; and we

had not been long at this when my old lord slipped from his place beside the fire, and was off without a word

to seek the warmth of bed. The three thus left together had neither love nor courtesy to share; not one of us

would have sat up one instant to oblige another; yet from the influence of custom, and as the cards had just

been dealt, we continued the form of playing out the round. I should say we were late sitters; and though my

lord had departed earlier than was his custom, twelve was already gone some time upon the clock, and the

servants long ago in bed. Another thing I should say, that although I never saw the Master anyway affected

with liquor, he had been drinking freely, and was perhaps (although he showed it not) a trifle heated.

Anyway, he now practised one of his transitions; and so soon as the door closed behind my lord, and without

the smallest change of voice, shifted from ordinary civil talk into a stream of insult.

"My dear Henry, it is yours to play," he had been saying, and now continued: "It is a very strange thing how,

even in so small a matter as a game of cards, you display your rusticity. You play, Jacob, like a bonnet laird,

or a sailor in a tavern. The same dulness, the same petty greed, CETTE LENTEUR D'HEBETE QUI ME

FAIT RAGER; it is strange I should have such a brother. Even Square toes has a certain vivacity when his

stake is imperilled; but the dreariness of a game with you I positively lack language to depict."

Mr. Henry continued to look at his cards, as though very maturely considering some play; but his mind was

"Dear God, will this never be done?" cries the Master. "QUEL LOURDEAU! But why do I trouble you with

French expressions, which are lost on such an ignoramus? A LOURDEAU, my dear brother, is as we might

say a bumpkin, a clown, a clodpole: a fellow without grace, lightness, quickness; any gift of pleasing, any

natural brilliancy: such a one as you shall see, when you desire, by looking in the mirror. I tell you these

things for your good, I assure you; and besides, Squaretoes" (looking at me and stifling a yawn), "it is one of

my diversions in this very dreary spot to toast you and your master at the fire like chestnuts. I have great

pleasure in your case, for I observe the nickname (rustic as it is) has always the power to make you writhe.

But sometimes I have more trouble with this dear fellow here, who seems to have gone to sleep upon his

cards. Do you not see the applicability of the epithet I have just explained, dear Henry? Let me show you. For

instance, with all those solid qualities which I delight to recognise in you, I never knew a woman who did not

prefer me nor, I think," he continued, with the most silken deliberation, "I think who did not continue to

Mr. Henry laid down his cards. He rose to his feet very softly, and seemed all the while like a person in deep

thought. "You coward!" he said gently, as if to himself. And then, with neither hurry nor any particular

The Master sprang to his feet like one transfigured; I had never seen the man so beautiful. "A blow!" he cried.

"Lower your voice," said Mr. Henry. "Do you wish my father to interfere for you again?"

The Master caught me by the shoulder, held me at arm's length, and still addressing his brother: "Do you

"Please God it shall be yours," said Mr. Henry; and he went to the wall and took down a pair of swords that

hung there with others, naked. These he presented to the Master by the points. "Mackellar shall see us play

"You need insult me no more," said the Master, taking one of the swords at random. "I have hated you all my

"My father is but newly gone to bed," said Mr. Henry. "We must go somewhere forth of the house."

"Gentlemen," said I, "shame upon you both! Sons of the same mother, would you turn against the life she

"Even so, Mackellar," said Mr. Henry, with the same perfect quietude of manner he had shown throughout.

And now here is a blot upon my life. At these words of mine the Master turned his blade against my bosom; I

saw the light run along the steel; and I threw up my arms and fell to my knees before him on the floor. "No,

"We shall have no more trouble with him," said the Master. "It is a good thing to have a coward in the

To my shame be it said, I was still so blinded with the flashing of that bare sword that I volunteered to bring a

"We do not need a lllantern," says the Master, mocking me. "There is no breath of air. Come, get to your

feet, take a pair of lights, and go before. I am close behind with this " making. the blade glitter as he spoke.

I took up the candlesticks and went before them, steps that I would give my hand to recall; but a coward is a

slave at the best; and even as I went, my teeth smote each other in my mouth. It was as he had said: there was

no breath stirring; a windless stricture of frost had bound the air; and as we went forth in the shine of the

candles, the blackness was like a roof over our heads. Never a word was said; there was never a sound but the

creaking of our steps along the frozen path. The cold of the night fell about me like a bucket of water; I shook

as I went with more than terror; but my companions, bareheaded like myself, and fresh from the warm ball,

I did as he bid me, and presently the flames went up, as steady as in a chamber, in the midst of the frosted

"I will give you every advantage," replied Mr. Henry, shifting his ground, "for I think you are about to die."

"Henry Durie," said the Master, "two words before I begin. You are a fencer, you can hold a foil; you little

know what a change it makes to hold a sword! And by that I know you are to fall. But see how strong is my

situation! If you fall, I shift out of this country to where my money is before me. If I fall, where are you? My

father, your wife who is in love with me, as you very well know your child even, who prefers me to

yourself: how will these avenge me! Had you thought of that, dear Henry?" He looked at his brother with a

I am no judge of the play; my head, besides, was gone with cold and fear and horror; but it seems that Mr.

Henry took and kept the upper hand from the engagement, crowding in upon his foe with a contained and

glowing fury. Nearer and nearer he crept upon the man, till of a sudden the Master leaped back with a little

sobbing oath; and I believe the movement brought the light once more against his eyes. To it they went again,

on the fresh ground; but now methought closer, Mr. Henry pressing more outrageously, the Master beyond

doubt with shaken confidence. For it is beyond doubt he now recognised himself for lost, and had some taste

of the cold agony of fear; or he had never attempted the foul stroke. I cannot say I followed it, my untrained

eye was never quick enough to seize details, but it appears he caught his brother's blade with his left hand, a

practice not permitted. Certainly Mr. Henry only saved himself by leaping on one side; as certainly the

Master, lunging in the air, stumbled on his knee, and before he could move the sword was through his body.

I cried out with a stifled scream, and ran in; but the body was already fallen to the ground, where it writhed a

"Dead?" he repeated, a little stupidly; and then with a rising tone, "Dead? dead?" says he, and suddenly cast

"What must we do?" said I. "Be yourself, sir. It is too late now: you must be yourself."

He turned and stared at me. "Oh, Mackellar!" says he, and put his face in his hands.

I plucked him by the coat. "For God's sake, for all our sakes, be more courageous!" said I. "What must we

"Do?" says he. And with that his eye fell on the body, and "Oh!" he cries out, with his hand to his brow, as if

he had never remembered; and, turning from me, made off towards the house of Durrisdeer at a strange

I stood a moment mused; then it seemed to me my duty lay most plain on the side of the living; and I ran after

him, leaving the candles on the frosty ground and the body lying in their light under the trees. But run as I

pleased, he had the start of me, and was got into the house, and up to the hall, where I found him standing

before the fire with his face once more in his hands, and as he so stood he visibly shuddered.

"What is this that I have done?" cries he, and then looking upon me with a countenance that I shall never

The word knocked at my heart; but it was no time for weakness. I went and poured him out a glass of brandy.

"Drink that," said I, "drink it down." I forced him to swallow it like a child; and, being still perished with the

"It has to be told, Mackellar," said he. "It must be told." And he fell suddenly in a seat my old lord's seat by

Dismay came upon my soul; it was plain there was no help in Mr. Henry. "Well," said I, "sit there, and leave

all to me." And taking a candle in my hand, I set forth out of the room in the dark house. There was no

movement; I must suppose that all had gone unobserved; and I was now to consider how to smuggle through

the rest with the like secrecy. It was no hour for scruples; and I opened my lady's door without so much as a

"Madam," said I, "I will go forth again into the passage; and do you get as quickly as you can into your

She troubled me with no questions, nor did she keep me waiting. Ere I had time to prepare a word of that

"Madam," said I, "if you cannot be very brave, I must go elsewhere; for if no one helps me tonight, there is

"I am very courageous," said she; and she looked at me with a sort of smile, very painful to see, but very

"And the Master," said I. "Things have been borne so long, things of which you know nothing, which you

would not believe if I should tell. But tonight it went too far, and when he insulted you "

"Oh! madam," cried I, my bitterness breaking forth, "do you ask me such a question? Indeed, then, I may go

"I do not know in what I have offended you," said she. "Forgive me; put me out of this suspense."

But I dared not tell her yet; I felt not sure of her; and at the doubt, and under the sense of impotence it brought

"Madam," said I, "we are speaking of two men: one of them insulted you, and you ask me which. I will help

you to the answer. With one of these men you have spent all your hours: has the other reproached you? To

one you have been always kind; to the other, as God sees me and judges between us two, I think not always:

has his love ever failed you? Tonight one of these two men told the other, in my hearing the hearing of a

hired stranger, that you were in love with him. Before I say one word, you shall answer your own question:

Which was it? Nay, madam, you shall answer me another: If it has come to this dreadful end, whose fault is

She stared at me like one dazzled. "Good God!" she said once, in a kind of bursting exclamation; and then a

second time in a whisper to herself: "Great God! In the name of mercy, Mackellar, what is wrong?" she

"You are not fit to hear," said I. "Whatever it was, you shall say first it was your fault."

"Oh!" she cried, with a gesture of wringing her hands, "this man will drive me mad! Can you not put me out

"I think not once of you," I cried. "I think of none but my dear unhappy master."

I saw her sway like something stricken by the wind; and I know not whether in cowardice or misery, turned

aside and looked upon the floor. "These are dreadful tidings," said I at length, when her silence began to put

me in some fear; "and you and I behove to be the more bold if the house is to be saved." Still she answered

nothing. "There is Miss Katharine, besides," I added: "unless we bring this matter through, her inheritance is

I do not know if it was the thought of her child or the naked word shame, that gave her deliverance; at least, I

had no sooner spoken than a sound passed her lips, the like of it I never heard; it was as though she had lain

buried under a hill and sought to move that burthen. And the next moment she had found a sort of voice.

"It was a fair fight on my dear master's part," said I. "As for the other, he was slain in the very act of a foul

"Madam," said I, "hatred of that man glows in my bosom like a burning fire; ay, even now he is dead. God

knows, I would have stopped the fighting, had I dared. It is my shame I did not. But when I saw him fall, if I

could have spared one thought from pitying of my master, it had been to exult in that deliverance."

"Your husband," said I. She looked at me with a countenance illegible. "Are you going to turn your back on

"God bless you for that word!" I said. "Go to him now, where he sits in the hall; speak to him it matters not

what you say; give him your hand; say, 'I know all;' if God gives you grace enough, say, 'Forgive me.'"

"God strengthen you, and make you merciful," said she. "I will go to my husband."

"I will find my way in the dark," she said, with a shudder, and I think the shudder was at me.

So we separated she down stairs to where a little light glimmered in the halldoor, I along the passage to

my lord's room. It seems hard to say why, but I could not burst in on the old man as I could on the young

woman; with whatever reluctance, I must knock. But his old slumbers were light, or perhaps he slept not; and

He, too, sat up in bed; very aged and bloodless he looked; and whereas he had a certain largeness of

appearance when dressed for daylight, he now seemed frail and little, and his face (the wig being laid aside)

not bigger than a child's. This daunted me; nor less, the haggard surmise of misfortune in his eye. Yet his

voice was even peaceful as he inquired my errand. I set my candle down upon a chair, leaned on the

"Lord Durrisdeer," said I, "it is very well known to you that I am a partisan in your family."

"I hope we are none of us partisans," said he. "That you love my son sincerely, I have always been glad to

"Oh! my lord, we are past the hour of these civilities," I replied. "If we are to save anything out of the fire, we

must look the fact in its bare countenance. A partisan I am; partisans we have all been; it is as a partisan that I

am here in the middle of the night to plead before you. Hear me; before I go, I will tell you why."

"I would always hear you, Mr. Mackellar," said he, "and that at any hour, whether of the day or night, for I

would be always sure you had a reason. You spoke once before to very proper purpose; I have not forgotten

"I am here to plead the cause of my master," I said. "I need not tell you how he acts. You know how he is

placed. You know with what generosity, he has always met your other met your wishes," I corrected

myself, stumbling at that name of son. "You know you must know what he has suffered what he has

"You said you would hear me," I continued. "What you do not know, what you should know, one of the

things I am here to speak of, is the persecution he must bear in private. Your back is not turned before one

whom I dare not name to you falls upon him with the most unfeeling taunts; twits him pardon me, my lord

twits him with your partiality, calls him Jacob, calls him clown, pursues him with ungenerous raillery, not

to be borne by man. And let but one of you appear, instantly he changes; and my master must smile and

courtesy to the man who has been feeding him with insults; I know, for I have shared in some of it, and I tell

you the life is insupportable. All these months it has endured; it began with the man's landing; it was by the

My lord made a movement as if to throw aside the clothes and rise. "If there be any truth in this " said he.

"Ah, my lord! indeed I should, and you may well hate the face of this unfaithful servant!" I cried.

Again I checked him. "I have not done," said I. "Would God I had! All this my dear, unfortunate patron has

endured without help or countenance. Your own best word, my lord, was only gratitude. Oh, but he was your

son, too! He had no other father. He was hated in the country, God knows how unjustly. He had a loveless

marriage. He stood on all hands without affection or support dear, generous, illfated, noble heart!"

"Your tears do you much honour and me much shame," says my lord, with a palsied trembling. "But you do

me some injustice. Henry has been ever dear to me, very dear. James (I do not deny it, Mr. Mackellar), James

is perhaps dearer; you have not seen my James in quite a favourable light; he has suffered under his

misfortunes; and we can only remember how great and how unmerited these were. And even now his is the

more affectionate nature. But I will not speak of him. All that you say of Henry is most true; I do not wonder,

I know him to be very magnanimous; you will say I trade upon the knowledge? It is possible; there are

dangerous virtues: virtues that tempt the encroacher. Mr. Mackellar, I will make it up to him; I will take order

"I must not hear you blame yourself, my lord, with that which I have yet to tell upon my conscience," I

replied. "You have not been weak; you have been abused by a devilish dissembler. You saw yourself how he

had deceived you in the matter of his danger; he has deceived you throughout in every step of his career. I

wish to pluck him from your heart; I wish to force your eyes upon your other son; ah, you have a son there!"

I made some gesture of despair that struck him; he looked at me with a changed face. "There is much worse

"Much worse," I answered. "This night he said these words to Mr. Henry: 'I have never known a woman who

"I will hear nothing against my daughter," he cried; and from his readiness to stop me in this direction, I

conclude his eyes were not so dull as I had fancied, and he had looked not without anxiety upon the siege of

"I think not of blaming her," cried I. "It is not that. These words were said in my hearing to Mr. Henry; and if

you find them not yet plain enough, these others but a little after: Your wife, who is in love with me!'"

I flung myself on my knees by the bedside. "Oh, my lord," cried I, "think on him you have left; think of this

poor sinner whom you begot, whom your wife bore to you, whom we have none of us strengthened as we

could; think of him, not of yourself; he is the other sufferer think of him! That is the door for sorrow

Christ's door, God's door: oh! it stands open. Think of him, even as he thought of you. 'WHO IS TO TELL

THE OLD MAN?' these were his words. It was for that I came; that is why I am here pleading at your feet."

"Let me get up," he cried, thrusting me aside, and was on his feet before myself. His voice shook like a sail in

the wind, yet he spoke with a good loudness; his face was like the snow, but his eyes were steady and dry.

"And Mr. Henry?" he asked. And when I had told him he knotted his old face in thought.

"Candles?" he cried. And with that he ran to the window, opened it, and looked abroad. "It might be spied

"The freetraders," said my lord. "Run at once, Mackellar; put these candles out. I will dress in the meanwhile;

I groped my way downstairs, and out at the door. From quite a far way off a sheen was visible, making points

of brightness in the shrubbery; in so black a night it might have been remarked for miles; and I blamed

myself bitterly for my incaution. How much more sharply when I reached the place! One of the candlesticks

was overthrown, and that taper quenched. The other burned steadily by itself, and made a broad space of light

upon the frosted ground. All within that circle seemed, by the force of contrast and the overhanging

blackness, brighter than by day. And there was the bloodstain in the midst; and a little farther off Mr. Henry's

sword, the pommel of which was of silver; but of the body, not a trace. My heart thumped upon my ribs, the

hair stirred upon my scalp, as I stood there staring so strange was the sight, so dire the fears it wakened. I

looked right and left; the ground was so hard, it told no story. I stood and listened till my ears ached, but the

night was hollow about me like an empty church; not even a ripple stirred upon the shore; it seemed you

I put the candle out, and the blackness fell about me groping dark; it was like a crowd surrounding me; and I

went back to the house of Durrisdeer, with my chin upon my shoulder, startling, as I went, with craven

suppositions. In the door a figure moved to meet me, and I had near screamed with terror ere I recognised

"I can see in the dark. I have been standing here so long so long," said she. "Come, give me your hand."

She spied the sword, picked it up, and seeing the blood, let it fall again with her hands thrown wide. "Ah!"

she cried. And then, with an instant courage, handled it the second time, and thrust it to the hilt into the

frozen ground. "I will take it back and clean it properly," says she, and again looked about her on all sides. "It

"There was no flutter of his heart," said I, and then remembering: "Why are you not with your husband?"

At this, for the first time, I was seized with sorrow for her. "God knows, madam," I cried, "God knows I am

not so hard as I appear; on this dreadful night who can veneer his words? But I am a friend to all who are not

I saw all at once, like the rending of a veil, how nobly she had borne this unnatural calamity, and how

As we walked back, I bearing the candlesticks, she the sword a strange burthen for that woman she had

My lord was nearly dressed when I came to his chamber. He heard me with a frown. "The freetraders," said

"I know; but you may very well have been in error. Why should they remove him if not living?" he asked.

"Oh! here is a great door of hope. It must be given out that he departed as he came without any note of

I saw he had fallen, like the rest of us, to think mainly of the house. Now that all the living members of the

family were plunged in irremediable sorrow, it was strange how we turned to that conjoint abstraction of the

family itself, and sought to bolster up the airy nothing of its reputation: not the Duries only, but the hired

"I will see," said he. "I am going first to visit him; then I go forth with you to view the shrubbery and

We went downstairs into the hall. Mr. Henry sat by the table with his head upon his hand, like a man of stone.

His wife stood a little back from him, her hand at her mouth; it was plain she could not move him. My old

lord walked very steadily to where his son was sitting; he had a steady countenance, too, but methought a

little cold. When he was come quite up, he held out both his hands and said, "My son!"

With a broken, strangled cry, Mr. Henry leaped up and fell on his father's neck, crying and weeping, the most

pitiful sight that ever a man witnessed. "Oh! father," he cried, "you know I loved him; you know I loved him

in the beginning; I could have died for him you know that! I would have given my life for him and you.

Oh! say you know that. Oh! say you can forgive me. O father, father, what have I done what have I done?

And we used to be bairns together!" and wept and sobbed, and fondled the old man, and clutched him about

And then he caught sight of his wife (you would have thought for the first time), where she stood weeping to

hear him, and in a moment had fallen at her knees. "And O my lass," he cried, "you must forgive me, too!

Not your husband I have only been the ruin of your life. But you knew me when I was a lad; there was no

harm in Henry Durie then; he meant aye to be a friend to you. It's him it's the old bairn that played with you

Throughout all this my lord was like a cold, kind spectator with his wits about him. At the first cry, which

was indeed enough to call the house about us, he had said to me over his shoulder, "Close the door." And

Upon my going forth again with my lord, I was aware of a strange phenomenon; for though it was quite dark,

and the night not yet old, methought I smelt the morning. At the same time there went a tossing through the

branches of the evergreens, so that they sounded like a quiet sea, and the air pulled at times against our faces,

and the flame of the candle shook. We made the more speed, I believe, being surrounded by this bustle;

visited the scene of the duel, where my lord looked upon the blood with stoicism; and passing farther on

toward the landingplace, came at last upon some evidences of the truth. For, first of all, where there was a

pool across the path, the ice had been trodden in, plainly by more than one man's weight; next, and but a little

farther, a young tree was broken, and down by the landingplace, where the traders' boats were usually

beached, another stain of blood marked where the body must have been infallibly set down to rest the bearers.

This stain we set ourselves to wash away with the seawater, carrying it in my lord's hat; and as we were thus

"It will come to snow," says my lord; "and the best thing that we could hope. Let us go back now; we can do

As we went houseward, the wind being again subsided, we were aware of a strong pattering noise about us in

the night; and when we issued from the shelter of the trees, we found it raining smartly.

Throughout the whole of this, my lord's clearness of mind, no less than his activity of body, had not ceased to

minister to my amazement. He set the crown upon it in the council we held on our return. The freetraders had

certainly secured the Master, though whether dead or alive we were still left to our conjectures; the rain

would, long before day, wipe out all marks of the transaction; by this we must profit. The Master had

unexpectedly come after the fall of night; it must now he given out he had as suddenly departed before the

break of day; and, to make all this plausible, it now only remained for me to mount into the man's chamber,

and pack and conceal his baggage. True, we still lay at the discretion of the traders; but that was the incurable

I heard him, as I said, with wonder, and hastened to obey. Mr. and Mrs. Henry were gone from the hall; my

lord, for warmth's sake, hurried to his bed; there was still no sign of stir among the servants, and as I went up

the tower stair, and entered the dead man's room, a horror of solitude weighed upon my mind. To my extreme

surprise, it was all in the disorder of departure. Of his three portmanteaux, two were already locked; the third

lay open and near full. At once there flashed upon me some suspicion of the truth. The man had been going,

after all; he had but waited upon Crail, as Crail waited upon the wind; early in the night the seamen had

perceived the weather changing; the boat had come to give notice of the change and call the passenger

aboard, and the boat's crew had stumbled on him dying in his blood. Nay, and there was more behind. This

prearranged departure shed some light upon his inconceivable insult of the night before; it was a parting

shot, hatred being no longer checked by policy. And, for another thing, the nature of that insult, and the

conduct of Mrs. Henry, pointed to one conclusion, which I have never verified, and can now never verify

until the great assize the conclusion that he had at last forgotten himself, had gone too far in his advances,

and had been rebuffed. It can never be verified, as I say; but as I thought of it that morning among his

Into the open portmanteau I dipped a little ere I closed it. The most beautiful lace and linen, many suits of

those fine plain clothes in which he loved to appear; a book or two, and those of the best, Caesar's

"Commentaries," a volume of Mr. Hobbes, the "Henriade" of M. de Voltaire, a book upon the Indies, one on

the mathematics, far beyond where I have studied: these were what I observed with very mingled feelings.

But in the open portmanteau, no papers of any description. This set me musing. It was possible the man was

dead; but, since the traders had carried him away, not likely. It was possible he might still die of his wound;

but it was also possible he might not. And in this latter case I was determined to have the means of some

One after another I carried his portmanteaux to a loft in the top of the house which we kept locked; went to

my own room for my keys, and, returning to the loft, had the gratification to find two that fitted pretty well.

In one of the portmanteaux there was a shagreen lettercase, which I cut open with my knife; and thenceforth

(so far as any credit went) the man was at my mercy. Here was a vast deal of gallant correspondence, chiefly

of his Paris days; and, what was more to the purpose, here were the copies of his own reports to the English

Secretary, and the originals of the Secretary's answers: a most damning series: such as to publish would be to

wreck the Master's honour and to set a price upon his life. I chuckled to myself as I ran through the

documents; I rubbed my hands, I sang aloud in my glee. Day found me at the pleasing task; nor did I then

remit my diligence, except in so far as I went to the window looked out for a moment, to see the frost quite

gone, the world turned black again, and the rain and the wind driving in the bay and to assure myself that

the lugger was gone from its anchorage, and the Master (whether dead or alive) now tumbling on the Irish

It is proper I should add in this place the very little I have subsequently angled out upon the doings of that

night. It took me a long while to gather it; for we dared not openly ask, and the freetraders regarded me with

enmity, if not with scorn. It was near six months before we even knew for certain that the man survived; and

it was years before I learned from one of Crail's men, turned publican on his illgotten gain, some particulars

which smack to me of truth. It seems the traders found the Master struggled on one elbow, and now staring

round him, and now gazing at the candle or at his hand which was all bloodied, like a man stupid. Upon their

coming, he would seem to have found his mind, bade them carry him aboard, and hold their tongues; and on

the captain asking how he had come in such a pickle, replied with a burst of passionate swearing, and

incontinently fainted. They held some debate, but they were momently looking for a wind, they were highly

paid to smuggle him to France, and did not care to delay. Besides which, he was well enough liked by these

abominable wretches: they supposed him under capital sentence, knew not in what mischief he might have

got his wound, and judged it a piece of good nature to remove him out of the way of danger. So he was taken

aboard, recovered on the passage over, and was set ashore a convalescent at the Havre de Grace. What is

truly notable: he said not a word to anyone of the duel, and not a trader knows to this day in what quarrel, or

by the hand of what adversary, he fell. With any other man I should have set this down to natural decency;

with him, to pride. He could not bear to avow, perhaps even to himself, that he had been vanquished by one

Of the heavy sickness which declared itself next morning I can think with equanimity, as of the last

unmingled trouble that befell my master; and even that was perhaps a mercy in disguise; for what pains of the

body could equal the miseries of his mind? Mrs. Henry and I had the watching by the bed. My old lord called

from time to time to take the news, but would not usually pass the door. Once, I remember, when hope was

nigh gone, he stepped to the bedside, looked awhile in his son's face, and turned away with a gesture of the

head and hand thrown up, that remains upon my mind as something tragic; such grief and such a scorn of

sublunary things were there expressed. But the most of the time Mrs. Henry and I had the room to ourselves,

taking turns by night, and bearing each other company by day, for it was dreary watching. Mr. Henry, his

shaven head bound in a napkin, tossed fro without remission, beating the bed with his hands. His tongue

never lay; his voice ran continuously like a river, so that my heart was weary with the sound of it. It was

notable, and to me inexpressibly mortifying, that he spoke all the while on matters of no import: comings and

goings, horses which he was ever calling to have saddled, thinking perhaps (the poor soul!) that he might

ride away from his discomfort matters of the garden, the salmon nets, and (what I particularly raged to

hear) continually of his affairs, cyphering figures and holding disputation with the tenantry. Never a word of

his father or his wife, nor of the Master, save only for a day or two, when his mind dwelled entirely in the

past, and he supposed himself a boy again and upon some innocent child's play with his brother. What made

this the more affecting: it appeared the Master had then run some peril of his life, for there was a cry "Oh!

Jamie will be drowned Oh, save Jamie!" which he came over and over with a great deal of passion.

This, I say, was affecting, both to Mrs. Henry and myself; but the balance of my master's wanderings did him

little justice. It seemed he had set out to justify his brother's calumnies; as though he was bent to prove

himself a man of a dry nature, immersed in moneygetting. Had I been there alone, I would not have troubled

my thumb; but all the while, as I listened, I was estimating the effect on the man's wife, and telling myself

that he fell lower every day. I was the one person on the surface of the globe that comprehended him, and I

was bound there should be yet another. Whether he was to die there and his virtues perish: or whether he

should save his days and come back to that inheritance of sorrows, his right memory: I was bound he should

be heartily lamented in the one case, and unaffectedly welcomed in the other, by the person he loved the

Finding no occasion of free speech, I bethought me at last of a kind of documentary disclosure; and for some

nights, when I was off duty and should have been asleep, I gave my time to the preparation of that which I

may call my budget. But this I found to be the easiest portion of my task, and that which remained namely,

the presentation to my lady almost more than I had fortitude to overtake. Several days I went about with my

papers under my arm, spying for some juncture of talk to serve as introduction. I will not deny but that some

offered; only when they did my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth; and I think I might have been carrying

about my packet till this day, had not a fortunate accident delivered me from all my hesitations. This was at

night, when I was once more leaving the room, the thing not yet done, and myself in despair at my own

"What do you carry about with you, Mr. Mackellar?" she asked. "These last days, I see you always coming in

I returned upon my steps without a word, laid the papers before her on the table, and left her to her reading.

Of what that was, I am now to give you some idea; and the best will be to reproduce a letter of my own which

came first in the budget and of which (according to an excellent habitude) I have preserved the scroll. It will

show, too, the moderation of my part in these affairs, a thing which some have called recklessly in question.

"I trust I would not step out of my place without occasion; but I see how much evil has flowed in the past to

all of your noble house from that unhappy and secretive fault of reticency, and the papers on which I venture

to call your attention are family papers, and all highly worthy your acquaintance.

"I append a schedule with some necessary observations, "And am, "Honoured Madam, "Your ladyship's

"A. Scroll of ten letters from Ephraim Mackellar to the Hon. James Durie, Esq., by courtesy Master of

Ballantrae during the latter's residence in Paris: under dates . . . " (follow the dates) . . . "Nota: to be read in

"B. Seven original letters from the said Mr of Ballantrae to the said E. Mackellar, under dates . . . " (follow

"C. Three original letters from the Mr of Ballantrae to the Hon. Henry Durie, Esq., under dates . . . " (follow

the dates) . . . "Nota: given me by Mr. Henry to answer: copies of my answers A 4, A 5, and A 9 of these

productions. The purport of Mr. Henry's communications, of which I can find no scroll, may be gathered

"D. A correspondence, original and scroll, extending over a period of three years till January of the current

year, between the said Mr of Ballantrae and , Under Secretary of State; twentyseven in all. Nota: found

Weary as I was with watching and distress of mind, it was impossible for me to sleep. All night long I walked

in my chamber, revolving what should be the issue, and sometimes repenting the temerity of my immixture in

affairs so private; and with the first peep of the morning I was at the sickroom door. Mrs. Henry had thrown

open the shutters and even the window, for the temperature was mild. She looked steadfastly before her;

where was nothing to see, or only the blue of the morning creeping among woods. Upon the stir of my

entrance she did not so much as turn about her face: a circumstance from which I augured very ill.

"Madam," I began; and then again, "Madam;" but could make no more of it. Nor yet did Mrs. Henry come to

my assistance with a word. In this pass I began gathering up the papers where they lay scattered on the table;

and the first thing that struck me, their bulk appeared to have diminished. Once I ran them through, and

twice; but the correspondence with the Secretary of State, on which I had reckoned so much against the

future, was nowhere to be found. I looked in the chimney; amid the smouldering embers, black ashes of paper

"Good God, madam," cried I, in a voice not fitting for a sickroom, "Good God, madam, what have you done

"I have burned them," said Mrs. Henry, turning about. "It is enough, it is too much, that you and I have seen

"This is a fine night's work that you have done!" cried I. "And all to save the reputation of a man that ate

"To save the reputation of that family in which you are a servant, Mr. Mackellar," she returned, "and for

"It is a family I will not serve much longer," I cried, "for I am driven desperate. You have stricken the sword

out of my hands; you have left us all defenceless. I had always these letters I could shake over his head; and

now What is to do? We are so falsely situate we dare not show the man the door; the country would fly on

fire against us; and I had this one hold upon him and now it is gone now he may come back tomorrow,

and we must all sit down with him to dinner, go for a stroll with him on the terrace, or take a hand at cards, of

all things, to divert his leisure! No, madam! God forgive you, if He can find it in His heart; for I cannot find it

"I wonder to find you so simple, Mr. Mackellar," said Mrs. Henry. "What does this man value reputation?

But he knows how high we prize it; he knows we would rather die than make these letters public; and do you

suppose he would not trade upon the knowledge? What you call your sword, Mr. Mackellar, and which had

been one indeed against a man of any remnant of propriety, would have been but a sword of paper against

him. He would smile in your face at such a threat. He stands upon his degradation, he makes that his strength;

it is in vain to struggle with such characters." She cried out this last a little desperately, and then with more

quiet: "No, Mr. Mackellar; I have thought upon this matter all night, and there is no way out of it. Papers or

no papers, the door of this house stands open for him; he is the rightful heir, forsooth! If we sought to exclude

him, all would redound against poor Henry, and I should see him stoned again upon the streets. Ah! if Henry

dies, it is a different matter! They have broke the entail for their own good purposes; the estate goes to my

daughter; and I shall see who sets a foot upon it. But if Henry lives, my poor Mr. Mackellar, and that man

On the whole I was well pleased with Mrs. Henry's attitude of mind; nor could I even deny there was some

"Let us say no more about it," said I. "I can only be sorry I trusted a lady with the originals, which was an

unbusinesslike proceeding at the best. As for what I said of leaving the service of the family, it was spoken

with the tongue only; and you may set your mind at rest. I belong to Durrisdeer, Mrs. Henry, as if I had been

I must do her the justice to say she seemed perfectly relieved; so that we began this morning, as we were to

continue for so many years, on a proper ground of mutual indulgence and respect.

The same day, which was certainly prededicate to joy, we observed the first signal of recovery in Mr. Henry;

and about three of the following afternoon he found his mind again, recognising me by name with the

strongest evidences of affection. Mrs. Henry was also in the room, at the bedfoot; but it did not appear that he

observed her. And indeed (the fever being gone) he was so weak that he made but the one effort and sank

again into lethargy. The course of his restoration was now slow but equal; every day his appetite improved;

every week we were able to remark an increase both of strength and flesh; and before the end of the month he

It was perhaps at this time that Mrs. Henry and I were the most uneasy in mind. Apprehension for his days

was at an end; and a worse fear succeeded. Every day we drew consciously nearer to a day of reckoning; and

the days passed on, and still there was nothing. Mr. Henry bettered in strength, he held long talks with us on a

great diversity of subjects, his father came and sat with him and went again; and still there was no reference

to the late tragedy or to the former troubles which had brought it on. Did he remember, and conceal his

dreadful knowledge? or was the whole blotted from his mind? This was the problem that kept us watching

and trembling all day when we were in his company and held us awake at night when we were in our lonely

beds. We knew not even which alternative to hope for, both appearing so unnatural and pointing so directly to

an unsound brain. Once this fear offered, I observed his conduct with sedulous particularity. Something of the

child he exhibited: a cheerfulness quite foreign to his previous character, an interest readily aroused, and then

very tenacious, in small matters which he had heretofore despised. When he was stricken down, I was his

only confidant, and I may say his only friend, and he was on terms of division with his wife; upon his

recovery, all was changed, the past forgotten, the wife first and even single in his thoughts. He turned to her

with all his emotions, like a child to its mother, and seemed secure of sympathy; called her in all his needs

with something of that querulous familiarity that marks a certainty of indulgence; and I must say, in justice to

the woman, he was never disappointed. To her, indeed, this changed behaviour was inexpressibly affecting;

and I think she felt it secretly as a reproach; so that I have seen her, in early days, escape out of the room that

she might indulge herself in weeping. But to me the change appeared not natural; and viewing it along with

all the rest, I began to wonder, with many headshakings, whether his reason were perfectly erect.

As this doubt stretched over many years, endured indeed until my master's death, and clouded all our

subsequent relations, I may well consider of it more at large. When he was able to resume some charge of his

affairs, I had many opportunities to try him with precision. There was no lack of understanding, nor yet of

authority; but the old continuous interest had quite departed; he grew readily fatigued, and fell to yawning;

and he carried into money relations, where it is certainly out of place, a facility that bordered upon slackness.

True, since we had no longer the exactions of the Master to contend against, there was the less occasion to

raise strictness into principle or do battle for a farthing. True, again, there was nothing excessive in these

relaxations, or I would have been no party to them. But the whole thing marked a change, very slight yet very

perceptible; and though no man could say my master had gone at all out of his mind, no man could deny that

he had drifted from his character. It was the same to the end, with his manner and appearance. Some of the

heat of the fever lingered in his veins: his movements a little hurried, his speech notably more voluble, yet

neither truly amiss. His whole mind stood open to happy impressions, welcoming these and making much of

them; but the smallest suggestion of trouble or sorrow he received with visible impatience and dismissed

again with immediate relief. It was to this temper that he owed the felicity of his later days; and yet here it

was, if anywhere, that you could call the man insane. A great part of this life consists in contemplating what

we cannot cure; but Mr. Henry, if he could not dismiss solicitude by an effort of the mind, must instantly and

at whatever cost annihilate the cause of it; so that he played alternately the ostrich and the bull. It is to this

strenuous cowardice of pain that I have to set down all the unfortunate and excessive steps of his subsequent

career. Certainly this was the reason of his beating McManus, the groom, a thing so much out of all his

former practice, and which awakened so much comment at the time. It is to this, again, that I must lay the

total lose of near upon two hundred pounds, more than the half of which I could have saved if his impatience

would have suffered me. But he preferred loss or any desperate extreme to a continuance of mental suffering.

All this has led me far from our immediate trouble: whether he remembered or had forgotten his late dreadful

act; and if he remembered, in what light he viewed it. The truth burst upon us suddenly, and was indeed one

of the chief surprises of my life. He had been several times abroad, and was now beginning to walk a little

with an arm, when it chanced I should be left alone with him upon the terrace. He turned to me with a

singular furtive smile, such as schoolboys use when in fault; and says he, in a private whisper and without the

I conceived I had best take the bull by the horns. "Mr. Henry," said I, "I have news to give that will rejoice

you exceedingly. In all human likelihood, your hands are clear of blood. I reason from certain indices; and by

these it should appear your brother was not dead, but was carried in a swound on board the lugger. But now

"Your brother James," I answered. "I would not raise a hope that may be found deceptive, but in my heart I

"Ah!" says Mr. Henry; and suddenly rising from his seat with more alacrity than he had yet discovered, set

one finger on my breast, and cried at me in a kind of screaming whisper, "Mackellar" these were his words

"nothing can kill that man. He is not mortal. He is bound upon my back to all eternity to all eternity!"

A day or two after, with the same secret smile, and first looking about as if to be sure we were alone,

"Mackellar," said he, "when you have any intelligence, be sure and let me know. We must keep an eye upon

"Oh yes he will," said Mr. Henry. "Wherever I am, there will he be." And again he looked all about him.

"No," said he, "that is a very good advice. We will never think of it, except when you have news. And we do

The manner of his saying this convinced me thoroughly of what I had scarce ventured to suspect: that, so far

from suffering any penitence for the attempt, he did but lament his failure. This was a discovery I kept to

myself, fearing it might do him a prejudice with his wife. But I might have saved myself the trouble; she had

divined it for herself, and found the sentiment quite natural. Indeed, I could not but say that there were three

of us, all of the same mind; nor could any news have reached Durrisdeer more generally welcome than

This brings me to speak of the exception, my old lord. As soon as my anxiety for my own master began to be

relaxed, I was aware of a change in the old gentleman, his father, that seemed to threaten mortal

His face was pale and swollen; as he sat in the chimneyside with his Latin, he would drop off sleeping and

the book roll in the ashes; some days he would drag his foot, others stumble in speaking. The amenity of his

behaviour appeared more extreme; full of excuses for the least trouble, very thoughtful for all; to myself, of a

most flattering civility. One day, that he had sent for his lawyer and remained a long while private, he met me

as he was crossing the hall with painful footsteps, and took me kindly by the hand. "Mr. Mackellar," said he,

"I have had many occasions to set a proper value on your services; and today, when I recast my will, I

have taken the freedom to name you for one of my executors. I believe you bear love enough to our house to

render me this service." At that very time he passed the greater portion of his days in clamber, from which it

was often difficult to rouse him; seemed to have losst all count of years, and had several times (particularly

on waking) called for his wife and for an old servant whose very gravestone was now green with moss. If I

had been put to my oath, I must have declared he was incapable of testing; and yet there was never a will

drawn more sensible in every trait, or showing a more excellent judgment both of persons and affairs.

His dissolution, though it took not very long, proceeded by infinitesimal gradations. His faculties decayed

together steadily; the power of his limbs was almost gone, he was extremely deaf, his speech had sunk into

mere mumblings; and yet to the end he managed to discover something of his former courtesy and kindness,

pressing the hand of any that helped him, presenting me with one of his Latin books, in which he had

laboriously traced my name, and in a thousand ways reminding us of the greatness of that loss which it might

almost be said we had already suffered. To the end, the power of articulation returned to him in flashes; it

seemed he had only forgotten the art of speech as a child forgets his lesson, and at times he would call some

part of it to mind. On the last night of his life he suddenly broke silence with these words from Virgil:

"Gnatique pratisque, alma, precor, miserere," perfectly uttered, and with a fitting accent. At the sudden clear

sound of it we started from our several occupations; but it was in vain we turned to him; he sat there silent,

and, to all appearance, fatuous. A little later he was had to bed with more difficulty than ever before; and

At a far later period I chanced to speak of these particulars with a doctor of medicine, a man of so high a

reputation that I scruple to adduce his name. By his view of it father and son both suffered from the affection:

the father from the strain of his unnatural sorrows the son perhaps in the excitation of the fever; each had

ruptured a vessel on the brain, and there was probably (my doctor added) some predisposition in the family to

accidents of that description. The father sank, the son recovered all the externals of a healthy man; but it is

like there was some destruction in those delicate tissues where the soul resides and does her earthly business;

her heavenly, I would fain hope, cannot be thus obstructed by material accidents. And yet, upon a more

mature opinion, it matters not one jot; for He who shall pass judgment on the records of our life is the same

The death of my old lord was the occasion of a fresh surprise to us who watched the behaviour of his

successor. To any considering mind, the two sons had between them slain their father, and he who took the

sword might be even said to have slain him with his hand, but no such thought appeared to trouble my new

lord. He was becomingly grave; I could scarce say sorrowful, or only with a pleasant sorrow; talking of the

dead with a regretful cheerfulness, relating old examples of his character, smiling at them with a good

conscience; and when the day of the funeral came round, doing the honours with exact propriety. I could

perceive, besides, that he found a solid gratification in his accession to the title; the which he was punctilious

And now there came upon the scene a new character, and one that played his part, too, in the story; I mean

the present lord, Alexander, whose birth (17th July, 1757) filled the cup of my poor master's happiness. There

was nothing then left him to wish for; nor yet leisure to wish for it. Indeed, there never was a parent so fond

and doting as he showed himself. He was continually uneasy in his son's absence. Was the child abroad? the

father would be watching the clouds in case it rained. Was it night? he would rise out of his bed to observe its

slumbers. His conversation grew even wearyful to strangers, since he talked of little but his son. In matters

relating to the estate, all was designed with a particular eye to Alexander; and it would be: "Let us put it in

hand at once, that the wood may be grown against Alexander's majority;" or, "This will fall in again

handsomely for Alexander's marriage." Every day this absorption of the man's nature became more

observable, with many touching and some very blameworthy particulars. Soon the child could walk abroad

with him, at first on the terrace, hand in hand, and afterward at large about the policies; and this grew to be

my lord's chief occupation. The sound of their two voices (audible a great way off, for they spoke loud)

became familiar in the neighbourhood; and for my part I found it more agreeable than the sound of birds. It

was pretty to see the pair returning, full of briars, and the father as flushed and sometimes as bemuddied as

the child, for they were equal sharers in all sorts of boyish entertainment, digging in the beach, damming of

streams, and what not; and I have seen them gaze through a fence at cattle with the same childish

The mention of these rambles brings me to a strange scene of which I was a witness. There was one walk I

never followed myself without emotion, so often had I gone there upon miserable errands, so much had there

befallen against the house of Durrisdeer. But the path lay handy from all points beyond the Muckle Ross; and

I was driven, although much against my will, to take my use of it perhaps once in the two months. It befell

when Mr. Alexander was of the age of seven or eight, I had some business on the far side in the morning, and

entered the shrubbery, on my homeward way, about nine of a bright forenoon. It was that time of year when

the woods are all in their spring colours, the thorns all in flower, and the birds in the high season of their

singing. In contrast to this merriment, the shrubbery was only the more sad, and I the more oppressed by its

associations. In this situation of spirit it struck me disagreeably to hear voices a little way in front, and to

recognise the tones of my lord and Mr. Alexander. I pushed ahead, and came presently into their view. They

stood together in the open space where the duel was, my lord with his hand on his son's shoulder, and

speaking with some gravity. At least, as he raised his head upon my coming, I thought I could perceive his

"Ah!" says he, "here comes the good Mackellar. I have just been telling Sandie the story of this place, and

how there was a man whom the devil tried to kill, and how near he came to kill the devil instead."

I had thought it strange enough he should bring the child into that scene; that he should actually be

discoursing of his act, passed measure. But the worst was yet to come; for he added, turning to his son

"Is it true, Mr. Mackellar?" asked the child. "And did you really see the devil?"

"I have not heard the tale," I replied; "and I am in a press of business." So far I said a little sourly, fencing

with the embarrassment of the position; and suddenly the bitterness of the past, and the terror of that scene by

candlelight, rushed in upon my mind. I bethought me that, for a difference of a second's quickness in parade,

the child before me might have never seen the day; and the emotion that always fluttered round my heart in

that dark shrubbery burst forth in words. "But so much is true," I cried, "that I have met the devil in these

woods, and seen him foiled here. Blessed be God that we escaped with life blessed be God that one stone

yet stands upon another in the walls of Durrisdeer! And, oh! Mr. Alexander, if ever you come by this spot,

though it was a hundred years hence, and you came with the gayest and the highest in the land, I would step

My lord bowed his head gravely. "Ah!" says he, "Mackellar is always in the right. Come, Alexander, take

your bonnet off." And with that he uncovered, and held out his hand. "O Lord," said he, "I thank Thee, and

my son thanks Thee, for Thy manifold great mercies. Let us have peace for a little; defend us from the evil

man. Smite him, O Lord, upon the lying mouth!" The last broke out of him like a cry; and at that, whether

remembered anger choked his utterance, or whether he perceived this was a singular sort of prayer, at least he

suddenly came to a full stop; and, after a moment, set back his hat upon his head.

"I think you have forgot a word, my lord," said I. "'Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass

against us. For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.'"

"Ah! that is easy saying," said my lord. "That is very easy saying, Mackellar. But for me to forgive! I think

"The bairn, my lord!" said I, with some severity, for I thought his expressions little fitted for the care of

I forget if it was the same day, but it was soon after, my lord, finding me alone, opened himself a little more

"I think so indeed, my lord," said I, "and the sight of it gives me a light heart."

"I think so indeed," says I, "and one in sorrow, too. If we are not here to try to do the best, in my humble

"It is an ill sentiment to shake hands upon," said I, "for Christian people. I think I will give you mine on some

This I said, smiling a little; but as for my lord, he went from the room laughing aloud.

For my lord's slavery to the child, I can find no expression adequate. He lost himself in that continual

thought: business, friends, and wife being all alike forgotten, or only remembered with a painful effort, like

that of one struggling with a posset. It was most notable in the matter of his wife. Since I had known

Durrisdeer, she had been the burthen of his thought and the loadstone of his eyes; and now she was quite cast

out. I have seen him come to the door of a room, look round, and pass my lady over as though she were a dog

before the fire. It would be Alexander he was seeking, and my lady knew it well. I have heard him speak to

her so ruggedly that I nearly found it in my heart to intervene: the cause would still be the same, that she had

in some way thwarted Alexander. Without doubt this was in the nature of a judgment on my lady. Without

doubt she had the tables turned upon her, as only Providence can do it; she who had been cold so many years

to every mark of tenderness, it was her part now to be neglected: the more praise to her that she played it

An odd situation resulted: that we had once more two parties in the house, and that now I was of my lady's.

Not that ever I lost the love I bore my master. But, for one thing, he had the less use for my society. For

another, I could not but compare the case of Mr. Alexander with that of Miss Katharine; for whom my lord

had never found the least attention. And for a third, I was wounded by the change he discovered to his wife,

which struck me in the nature of an infidelity. I could not but admire, besides, the constancy and kindness she

displayed. Perhaps her sentiment to my lord, as it had been founded from the first in pity, was that rather of a

mother than a wife; perhaps it pleased her if I may so say to behold her two children so happy in each

other; the more as one had suffered so unjustly in the past. But, for all that, and though I could never trace in

her one spark of jealousy, she must fall back for society on poor neglected Miss Katharine; and I, on my part,

came to pass my spare hours more and more with the mother and daughter. It would be easy to make too

much of this division, for it was a pleasant family, as families go; still the thing existed; whether my lord

knew it or not, I am in doubt. I do not think he did; he was bound up so entirely in his son; but the rest of us

What troubled us most, however, was the great and growing danger to the child. My lord was his father over

again; it was to be feared the son would prove a second Master. Time has proved these fears to have been

quite exaggerate. Certainly there is no more worthy gentleman today in Scotland than the seventh Lord

Durrisdeer. Of my own exodus from his employment it does not become me to speak, above all in a

[Editor's Note. Five pages of Mr. Mackellar's MS. are here omitted. I have gathered from their perusal an

impression that Mr. Mackellar, in his old age, was rather an exacting servant. Against the seventh Lord

Durrisdeer (with whom, at any rate, we have no concern) nothing material is alleged. R. L. S.]

. . . But our fear at the time was lest he should turn out, in the person of his son, a second edition of his

brother. My lady had tried to interject some wholesome discipline; she had been glad to give that up, and now

looked on with secret dismay; sometimes she even spoke of it by hints; and sometimes, when there was

brought to her knowledge some monstrous instance of my lord's indulgence, she would betray herself in a

gesture or perhaps an exclamation. As for myself, I was haunted by the thought both day and night: not so

much for the child's sake as for the father's. The man had gone to sleep, he was dreaming a dream, and any

rough wakening must infallibly prove mortal. That he should survive its death was inconceivable; and the

It was this continual preoccupation that screwed me up at last to a remonstrance: a matter worthy to be

narrated in detail. My lord and I sat one day at the same table upon some tedious business of detail; I have

said that he had lost his former interest in such occupations; he was plainly itching to be gone, and he looked

fretful, weary, and methought older than I had ever previously observed. I suppose it was the haggard face

"My lord," said I, with my head down, and feigning to continue my occupation "or, rather, let me call you

again by the name of Mr. Henry, for I fear your anger and want you to think upon old times "

"My good Mackellar!" said he; and that in tones so kindly that I had near forsook my purpose. But I called to

"Well," said he, with some defiance in his tone, "and what am I doing with my son?"

"Your father was a very good man," says I, straying from the direct path. "But do you think he was a wise

There was a pause before he spoke, and then: "I say nothing against him," he replied. "I had the most cause

"Why, there it is," said I. "You had the cause at least. And yet your father was a good man; I never knew a

better, save on the one point, nor yet a wiser. Where he stumbled, it is highly possible another man should

"I will, then," said I, my voice almost strangled with the thumping of my heart. "If you continue to indulge

Mr. Alexander, you are following in your father's footsteps. Beware, my lord, lest (when he grows up) your

I had never meant to put the thing so crudely; but in the extreme of fear, there comes a brutal kind of courage,

the most brutal indeed of all; and I burnt my ships with that plain word. I never had the answer. When I lifted

my head, my lord had risen to his feet, and the next moment he fell heavily on the floor. The fit or seizure

endured not very long; he came to himself vacantly, put his hand to his head, which I was then supporting,

and says he, in a broken voice: "I have been ill," and a little after: "Help me." I got him to his feet, and he

stood pretty well, though he kept hold of the table. "I have been ill, Mackellar," he said again. "Something

broke, Mackellar or was going to break, and then all swam away. I think I was very angry. Never you mind,

Mackellar; never you mind, my man. I wouldnae hurt a hair upon your head. Too much has come and gone.

It's a certain thing between us two. But I think, Mackellar, I will go to Mrs. Henry I think I will go to Mrs.

Henry," said he, and got pretty steadily from the room, leaving me overcome with penitence.

Presently the door flew open, and my lady swept in with flashing eyes. "What is all this?" she cried. "What

have you done to my husband? Will nothing teach you your position in this house? Will you never cease

"My lady," said I, "since I have been in this house I have had plenty of hard words. For a while they were my

daily diet, and I swallowed them all. As for today, you may call me what you please; you will never find the

I told her all with ingenuity, even as it is written here; and when she had heard me out, she pondered, and I

could see her animosity fall. "Yes," she said, "you meant well indeed. I have had the same thought myself, or

the same temptation rather, which makes me pardon you. But, dear God, can you not understand that he can

bear no more? He can bear no more!" she cried. "The cord is stretched to snapping. What matters the future if

"Amen," said I. "I will meddle no more. I am pleased enough that you should recognise the kindness of my

"Yes," said my lady; "but when it came to the point, I have to suppose your courage failed you; for what you

said was said cruelly." She paused, looking at me; then suddenly smiled a little, and said a singular thing: "Do

No more incident of any note occurred in the family until the return of that illstarred man the Master. But I

have to place here a second extract from the memoirs of Chevalier Burke, interesting in itself, and highly

necessary for my purpose. It is our only sight of the Master on his Indian travels; and the first word in these

pages of Secundra Dass. One fact, it is to observe, appears here very clearly, which if we had known some

twenty years ago, how many calamities and sorrows had been spared! that Secundra Dass spoke English.

. . . Here was I, therefore, on the streets of that city, the name of which I cannot call to mind, while even then

I was so ill acquainted with its situation that I knew not whether to go south or north. The alert being

sudden, I had run forth without shoes or stockings; my hat had been struck from my head in the mellay; my

kit was in the hands of the English; I had no companion but the cipaye, no weapon but my sword, and the

devil a coin in my pocket. In short, I was for all the world like one of those calendars with whom Mr. Galland

has made us acquainted in his elegant tales. These gentlemen, you will remember, were for ever falling in

with extraordinary incidents; and I was myself upon the brink of one so astonishing that I protest I cannot

The cipaye was a very honest man; he had served many years with the French colours, and would have let

himself be cut to pieces for any of the brave countrymen of Mr. Lally. It is the same fellow (his name has

quite escaped me) of whom I have narrated already a surprising instance of generosity of mind when he

found Mr. de Fessac and myself upon the ramparts, entirely overcome with liquor, and covered us with straw

while the commandant was passing by. I consulted him, therefore, with perfect freedom. It was a fine

question what to do; but we decided at last to escalade a garden wall, where we could certainly sleep in the

shadow of the trees, and might perhaps find an occasion to get hold of a pair of slippers and a turban. In that

part of the city we had only the difficulty of the choice, for it was a quarter consisting entirely of walled

gardens, and the lanes which divided them were at that hour of the night deserted. I gave the cipaye a back,

and we had soon dropped into a large enclosure full of trees. The place was soaking with the dew, which, in

that country, is exceedingly unwholesome, above all to whites; yet my fatigue was so extreme that I was

already half asleep, when the cipaye recalled me to my senses. In the far end of the enclosure a bright light

had suddenly shone out, and continued to burn steadily among the leaves. It was a circumstance highly

unusual in such a place and hour; and, in our situation, it behoved us to proceed with some timidity. The

cipaye was sent to reconnoitre, and pretty soon returned with the intelligence that we had fallen extremely

amiss, for the house belonged to a white man, who was in all likelihood English.

"Faith," says I, "if there is a white man to be seen, I will have a look at him; for, the Lord be praised! there are

The cipaye led me forward accordingly to a place from which I had a clear view upon the house. It was

surrounded with a wide verandah; a lamp, very well trimmed, stood upon the floor of it, and on either side of

the lamp there sat a man, crosslegged, after the Oriental manner. Both, besides, were bundled up in muslin

like two natives; and yet one of them was not only a white man, but a man very well known to me and the

reader, being indeed that very Master of Ballantrae of whose gallantry and genius I have had to speak so

often. Word had reached me that he was come to the Indies, though we had never met at least, and I heard

little of his occupations. But, sure, I had no sooner recognised him, and found myself in the arms of so old a

comrade, than I supposed my tribulations were quite done. I stepped plainly forth into the light of the moon,

which shone exceeding strong, and hailing Ballantrae by name, made him in a few words master of my

grievous situation. He turned, started the least thing in the world, looked me fair in the face while I was

speaking, and when I had done addressed himself to his companion in the barbarous native dialect. The

second person, who was of an extraordinary delicate appearance, with legs like walking canes and fingers

"The Sahib," says he, "understands no English language. I understand it myself, and I see you make some

small mistake oh! which may happen very often. But the Sahib would be glad to know how you come in a

"The Sahib understands no English language," says the native, as glib as before. "He be glad to know how

"Oh! the divil fetch him," says I. "He would be glad to know how I come in a garden, would he? Well, now,

my dear man, just have the civility to tell the Sahib, with my kind love, that we are two soldiers here whom

he never met and never heard of, but the cipaye is a broth of a boy, and I am a broth of a boy myself; and if

we don't get a full meal of meat, and a turban, and slippers, and the value of a gold mohur in small change as

a matter of convenience, bedad, my friend, I could lay my finger on a garden where there is going to be

They carried their comedy so far as to converse awhile in Hindustanee; and then says the Hindu, with the

same smile, but sighing as if he were tired of the repetition, "The Sahib would be glad to know how you

"Is that the way of it?" says I, and laying my hand on my sword hilt I bade the cipaye draw.

Ballantrae's Hindu, still smiling, pulled out a pistol from his bosom, and though Ballantrae himself never

Well, to be plain, it was what I was thinking myself; for the report of a pistol would have been, under

"Tell the Sahib I consider him no gentleman," says I, and turned away with a gesture of contempt.

I was not gone three steps when the voice of the Hindu called me back. "The Sahib would be glad to know if

you are a dam low Irishman," says he; and at the words Ballantrae smiled and bowed very low.

"The Sahib say you ask your friend Mackellar," says the Hindu. "The Sahib he cry quits."

"Tell the Sahib I will give him a cure for the Scots fiddle when next we meet," cried I.

There is little doubt some flaws may be picked in my own behaviour; and when a man, however gallant,

appeals to posterity with an account of his exploits, he must almost certainly expect to share the fate of

Caesar and Alexander, and to meet with some detractors. But there is one thing that can never be laid at the

(Here follows a passage which the Chevalier Burke has been at the pains to delete before sending me his

manuscript. Doubtless it was some very natural complaint of what he supposed to be an indiscretion on my

part; though, indeed, I can call none to mind. Perhaps Mr. Henry was less guarded; or it is just possible the

Master found the means to examine my correspondence, and himself read the letter from Troyes: in revenge

for which this cruel jest was perpetrated on Mr. Burke in his extreme necessity. The Master, for all his

wickedness, was not without some natural affection; I believe he was sincerely attached to Mr. Burke in the

beginning; but the thought of treachery dried up the springs of his very shallow friendship, and his detestable

It is a strange thing that I should be at a stick for a date the date, besides, of an incident that changed the

very nature of my life, and sent us all into foreign lands. But the truth is, I was stricken out of all my

habitudes, and find my journals very ill reddup, (7) the day not indicated sometimes for a week or two

together, and the whole fashion of the thing like that of a man near desperate. It was late in March at least, or

early in April, 1764. I had slept heavily, and wakened with a premonition of some evil to befall. So strong

was this upon my spirit that I hurried downstairs in my shirt and breeches, and my hand (I remember) shook

upon the rail. It was a cold, sunny morning, with a thick white frost; the blackbirds sang exceeding sweet and

loud about the house of Durrisdeer, and there was a noise of the sea in all the chambers. As I came by the

doors of the hall, another sound arrested me of voices talking. I drew nearer, and stood like a man

dreaming. Here was certainly a human voice, and that in my own master's house, and yet I knew it not;

certainly human speech, and that in my native land; and yet, listen as I pleased, I could not catch one syllable.

An old tale started up in my mind of a fairy wife (or perhaps only a wandering stranger), that came to the

place of my fathers some generations back, and stayed the matter of a week, talking often in a tongue that

signified nothing to the hearers; and went again, as she had come, under cloud of night, leaving not so much

as a name behind her. A little fear I had, but more curiosity; and I opened the halldoor, and entered.

The supperthings still lay upon the table; the shutters were still closed, although day peeped in the divisions;

and the great room was lighted only with a single taper and some lurching reverberation of the fire. Close in

the chimney sat two men. The one that was wrapped in a cloak and wore boots, I knew at once: it was the

bird of ill omen back again. Of the other, who was set close to the red embers, and made up into a bundle like

a mummy, I could but see that he was an alien, of a darker hue than any man of Europe, very frailly built,

with a singular tall forehead, and a secret eye. Several bundles and a small valise were on the floor; and to

judge by the smallness of this luggage, and by the condition of the Master's boots, grossly patched by some

He rose upon my entrance; our eyes crossed; and I know not why it should have been, but my courage rose

"Ha!" said I, "is this you?" and I was pleased with the unconcern of my own voice.

"Referring to Secundra Dass?" asked the Master. "Let me present you. He is a native gentleman of India."

"Hum!" said I. "I am no great lover either of you or your friends, Mr. Bally. But I will let a little daylight in,

and have a look at you." And so saying, I undid the shutters of the eastern window.

By the light of the morning I could perceive the man was changed. Later, when we were all together, I was

more struck to see how lightly time had dealt with him; but the first glance was otherwise.

A shade came upon his face. "If you could see yourself," said he, "you would perhaps not dwell upon the

"Hut!" I returned, "old age is nothing to me. I think I have been always old; and I am now, I thank God, better

known and more respected. It is not every one that can say that, Mr. Bally! The lines in your brow are

calamities; your life begins to close in upon you like a prison; death will soon be rapping at the door; and I

Here the Master addressed himself to Secundra Dass in Hindustanee, from which I gathered (I freely confess,

with a high degree of pleasure) that my remarks annoyed him. All this while, you may be sure, my mind had

been busy upon other matters, even while I rallied my enemy; and chiefly as to how I should communicate

secretly and quickly with my lord. To this, in the breathingspace now given me, I turned all the forces of my

mind; when, suddenly shifting my eyes, I was aware of the man himself standing in the doorway, and, to all

appearance, quite composed. He had no sooner met my looks than he stepped across the threshold. The

Master heard him coming, and advanced upon the other side; about four feet apart, these brothers came to a

full pause, and stood exchanging steady looks, and then my lord smiled, bowed a little forward, and turned

It was plain the Master was a trifle disconcerted; but he assumed the more impudence of speech and manner.

"Every one in this house renders me my proper title," says my lord. "If it please you to make an exception, I

will leave you to consider what appearance it will bear to strangers, and whether it may not be translated as

I could have clapped my hands together with delight: the more so as my lord left no time for any answer, but,

"Come quick," says he; "we have to sweep vermin from the house." And he sped through the passages, with

so swift a step that I could scarce keep up with him, straight to the door of John Paul, the which he opened

without summons and walked in. John was, to all appearance, sound asleep, but my lord made no pretence of

"John Paul," said he, speaking as quietly as ever I heard him, "you served my father long, or I would pack

you from the house like a dog. If in half an hour's time I find you gone, you shall continue to receive your

wages in Edinburgh. If you linger here or in St. Bride's old man, old servant, and altogether I shall find

some very astonishing way to make you smart for your disloyalty. Up and begone. The door you let them in

by will serve for your departure. I do not choose my son shall see your face again."

"I am rejoiced to find you bear the thing so quietly," said I, when we were forth again by ourselves.

"Quietly!" cries he, and put my hand suddenly against his heart, which struck upon his bosom like a sledge.

At this revelation I was filled with wonder and fear. There was no constitution could bear so violent a strain

his least of all, that was unhinged already; and I decided in my mind that we must bring this monstrous

"It would be well, I think, if I took word to my lady," said I. Indeed, he should have gone himself, but I

"Aye," says he, "do. I will hurry breakfast: we must all appear at the table, even Alexander; it must appear we

"My mind was long ago made up," said she. "We must make our packets secretly today, and leave secretly

tonight. Thank Heaven, we have another house! The first ship that sails shall bear us to New York."

"Not so, by your leave," said I. "There shall be a dog at his heels that can hold fast. Bed he shall have, and

board, and a horse to ride upon, if he behave himself; but the keys if you think well of it, my lady shall be

left in the hands of one Mackellar. There will be good care taken; trust him for that."

"Mr. Mackellar," she cried, "I thank you for that thought. All shall be left in your hands. If we must go into a

savage country, I bequeath it to you to take our vengeance. Send Macconochie to St. Bride's, to arrange

"I will never hear of it," he cried; "he would think I feared him. I will stay in my own house, please God, until

I die. There lives not the man can beard me out of it. Once and for all, here I am, and here I stay in spite of all

the devils in hell." I can give no idea of the vehemency of his words and utterance; but we both stood aghast,

My lady looked at me with an appeal that went to my heart and recalled me to my wits. I made her a private

sign to go, and when my lord and I were alone, went up to him where he was racing to and fro in one end of

"My lord," says I, "I am going to be the plaindealer once more; if for the last time, so much the better, for I

"Nothing will change me," he answered. "God forbid I should refuse to hear you; but nothing will change

me." This he said firmly, with no signal of the former violence, which already raised my hopes.

"Very well," said I "I can afford to waste my breath." I pointed to a chair, and he sat down and looked at me.

"I never spoke of it while it lasted," returned my lord, with a high flush of colour; "and it is all changed

"Do you know how much?" I said. "Do you know how much it is all changed? The tables are turned, my

lord! It is my lady that now courts you for a word, a look ay, and courts you in vain. Do you know with

whom she passes her days while you are out gallivanting in the policies? My lord, she is glad to pass them

with a certain dry old grieve (8) of the name of Ephraim Mackellar; and I think you may be able to remember

what that means, for I am the more in a mistake or you were once driven to the same company yourself."

"It is neither the name of Mackellar nor the name of God that can change the truth," said I; "and I am telling

you the fact. Now for you, that suffered so much, to deal out the same suffering to another, is that the part of

any Christian? But you are so swallowed up in your new friend that the old are all forgotten. They are all

clean vanished from your memory. And yet they stood by you at the darkest; my lady not the least. And does

my lady ever cross your mind? Does it ever cross your mind what she went through that night? or what

manner of a wife she has been to you thenceforward? or in what kind of a position she finds herself

today? Never. It is your pride to stay and face him out, and she must stay along with you. Oh! my lord's

pride that's the great affair! And yet she is the woman, and you are a great hulking man! She is the woman

that you swore to protect; and, more betoken, the own mother of that son of yours!"

"You are speaking very bitterly, Mackellar," said he; "but, the Lord knows, I fear you are speaking very true.

My lady was waiting near at hand to learn the issue. When I brought her in, my lord took a hand of each of

us, and laid them both upon his bosom. "I have had two friends in my life," said he. "All the comfort ever I

had, it came from one or other. When you two are in a mind, I think I would be an ungrateful dog " He shut

his mouth very hard, and looked on us with swimming eyes. "Do what ye like with me," says he, "only don't

think " He stopped again. "Do what ye please with me: God knows I love and honour you." And dropping

our two hands, he turned his back and went and gazed out of the window. But my lady ran after, calling his

I went out and shut the door behind me, and stood and thanked God from the bottom of my heart.

At the breakfast board, according to my lord's design, we were all met. The Master had by that time plucked

off his patched boots and made a toilet suitable to the hour; Secundra Dass was no longer bundled up in

wrappers, but wore a decent plain black suit, which misbecame him strangely; and the pair were at the great

window, looking forth, when the family entered. They turned; and the black man (as they had already named

him in the house) bowed almost to his knees, but the Master was for running forward like one of the family.

My lady stopped him, curtseying low from the far end of the hall, and keeping her children at her back. My

lord was a little in front: so there were the three cousins of Durrisdeer face to face. The hand of time was very

legible on all; I seemed to read in their changed faces a MEMENTO MORI; and what affected me still more,

it was the wicked man that bore his years the handsomest. My lady was quite transfigured into the matron, a

becoming woman for the head of a great tableful of children and dependents. My lord was grown slack in his

limbs; he stooped; he walked with a running motion, as though he had learned again from Mr. Alexander; his

face was drawn; it seemed a trifle longer than of old; and it wore at times a smile very singularly mingled,

and which (in my eyes) appeared both bitter and pathetic. But the Master still bore himself erect, although

perhaps with effort; his brow barred about the centre with imperious lines, his mouth set as for command. He

had all the gravity and something of the splendour of Satan in the "Paradise Lost." I could not help but see the

But indeed (as long as we were at the table) it seemed as if his authority were quite vanished and his teeth all

drawn. We had known him a magician that controlled the elements; and here he was, transformed into an

ordinary gentleman, chatting like his neighbours at the breakfastboard. For now the father was dead, and my

lord and lady reconciled, in what ear was he to pour his calumnies? It came upon me in a kind of vision how

hugely I had overrated the man's subtlety. He had his malice still; he was false as ever; and, the occasion

being gone that made his strength, he sat there impotent; he was still the viper, but now spent his venom on a

file. Two more thoughts occurred to me while yet we sat at breakfast: the first, that he was abashed I had

almost said, distressed to find his wickedness quite unavailing; the second, that perhaps my lord was in the

right, and we did amiss to fly from our dismasted enemy. But my poor man's leaping heart came in my mind,

When the meal was over, the Master followed me to my room, and, taking a chair (which I had never offered

"It is plain enough," said I. "We keep you for our reputation; as soon as you shall have publicly disgraced

"You are become an impudent rogue," said the Master, bending his brows at me dangerously.

"I learned in a good school," I returned. "And you must have perceived yourself that with my old lord's death

your power is quite departed. I do not fear you now, Mr. Bally; I think even God forgive me that I take a

"I do not think there will be any money going," I replied. "I would advise you not to build on that."

"Oh! you affect confidence," said the Master. "I have still one strong position that you people fear a

"Pardon me, Mr. Bally," says I. "We do not in the least fear a scandal against you."

He laughed again. "You have been studying repartee," he said. "But speech is very easy, and sometimes very

deceptive. I warn you fairly: you will find me vitriol in the house. You would do wiser to pay money down

A little after, my lord came with the lawyer, Mr. Carlyle; a bottle of old wine was brought, and we all had a

glass before we fell to business. The necessary deeds were then prepared and executed, and the Scotch estates

"There is one point, Mr. Carlyle," said my lord, when these affairs had been adjusted, "on which I wish that

you would do us justice. This sudden departure coinciding with my brother's return will be certainly

"I will make a point of it, my lord," said Mr. Carlyle. "The Mas Bally does not, then, accompany you?"

"It is a point I must approach," said my lord. "Mr. Bally remains at Durrisdeer, under the care of Mr.

"Ah! but, Mr. Carlyle, this is to be a secret quite among ourselves," interrupted my lord. "None but you and

"And Mr. Bally stays here? Quite so," said Mr. Carlyle. "The powers you leave " Then he broke off again.

"He will have no voice," said my lord; "and, I hope, no influence. Mr. Bally is not a good adviser."

"I understand him to have nothing," replied my lord. "I give him table, fire, and candle in this house."

"And in the matter of an allowance? If I am to share the responsibility, you will see how highly desirable it is

that I should understand your views," said the lawyer. "On the question of an allowance?"

"There will be no allowance," said my lord. "I wish Mr. Bally to live very private. We have not always been

"And in the matter of money," I added, "he has shown himself an infamous bad husband. Glance your eye

upon that docket, Mr. Carlyle, where I have brought together the different sums the man has drawn from the

Mr. Carlyle made the motion of whistling. "I had no guess of this," said he. "Excuse me once more, my lord,

if I appear to push you; but it is really desirable I should penetrate your intentions. Mr. Mackellar might die,

when I should find myself alone upon this trust. Would it not be rather your lordship's preference that Mr.

"I gather, my lord, that Mr. Bally is not a comfort to his family," says the lawyer with a smile.

My lord's face became suddenly knotted. "I wish he was in hell!" cried he, and filled himself a glass of wine,

but with a hand so tottering that he spilled the half into his bosom. This was the second time that, in the midst

of the most regular and wise behaviour, his animosity had spirted out. It startled Mr. Carlyle, who observed

my lord thenceforth with covert curiosity; and to me it restored the certainty that we were acting for the best

Except for this explosion the interview was very successfully conducted. No doubt Mr. Carlyle would talk, as

lawyers do, little by little. We could thus feel we had laid the foundations of a better feeling in the country,

and the man's own misconduct would certainly complete what we had begun. Indeed, before his departure,

the lawyer showed us there had already gone abroad some glimmerings of the truth.

"I should perhaps explain to you, my lord," said he, pausing, with his hat in his hand, "that I have not been

altogether surprised with your lordship's dispositions in the case of Mr. Bally. Something of this nature oozed

out when he was last in Durrisdeer. There was some talk of a woman at St. Bride's, to whom you had behaved

extremely handsome, and Mr. Bally with no small degree of cruelty. There was the entail, again, which was

much controverted. In short, there was no want of talk, back and forward; and some of our wiseacres took

up a strong opinion. I remained in suspense, as became one of my cloth; but Mr. Mackellar's docket here has

finally opened my eyes. I do not think, Mr. Mackellar, that you and I will give him that much rope."

The rest of that important day passed prosperously through. It was our policy to keep the enemy in view, and

I took my turn to be his watchman with the rest. I think his spirits rose as he perceived us to be so attentive,

and I know that mine insensibly declined. What chiefly daunted me was the man's singular dexterity to worm

himself into our troubles. You may have felt (after a horse accident) the hand of a bonesetter artfully divide

and interrogate the muscles, and settle strongly on the injured place? It was so with the Master's tongue, that

was so cunning to question; and his eyes, that were so quick to observe. I seemed to have said nothing, and

yet to have let all out. Before I knew where I was the man was condoling with me on my lord's neglect of my

lady and myself, and his hurtful indulgence to his son. On this last point I perceived him (with panic fear) to

return repeatedly. The boy had displayed a certain shrinking from his uncle; it was strong in my mind his

father had been fool enough to indoctrinate the same, which was no wise beginning: and when I looked upon

the man before me, still so handsome, so apt a speaker, with so great a variety of fortunes to relate, I saw he

was the very personage to captivate a boyish fancy. John Paul had left only that morning; it was not to be

supposed he had been altogether dumb upon his favourite subject: so that here would be Mr. Alexander in the

part of Dido, with a curiosity inflamed to hear; and there would be the Master, like a diabolical AEneas, full

of matter the most pleasing in the world to any youthful ear, such as battles, seadisasters, flights, the forests

of the West, and (since his later voyage) the ancient cities of the Indies. How cunningly these baits might be

employed, and what an empire might be so founded, little by little, in the mind of any boy, stood obviously

clear to me. There was no inhibition, so long as the man was in the house, that would be strong enough to

hold these two apart; for if it be hard to charm serpents, it is no very difficult thing to cast a glamour on a

little chip of manhood not very long in breeches. I recalled an ancient sailorman who dwelt in a lone house

beyond the Figgate Whins (I believe, he called it after Portobello), and how the boys would troop out of Leith

on a Saturday, and sit and listen to his swearing tales, as thick as crows about a carrion: a thing I often

remarked as I went by, a young student, on my own more meditative holiday diversion. Many of these boys

went, no doubt, in the face of an express command; many feared and even hated the old brute of whom they

made their hero; and I have seen them flee from him when he was tipsy, and stone him when he was drunk.

And yet there they came each Saturday! How much more easily would a boy like Mr. Alexander fall under

the influence of a highlooking, highspoken gentlemanadventurer, who should conceive the fancy to

entrap him; and, the influence gained, how easy to employ it for the child's perversion!

I doubt if our enemy had named Mr. Alexander three times before I perceived which way his mind was

aiming all this train of thought and memory passed in one pulsation through my own and you may say I

started back as though an open hole had gaped across a pathway. Mr. Alexander: there was the weak point,

there was the Eve in our perishable paradise; and the serpent was already hissing on the trail.

I promise you, I went the more heartily about the preparations; my last scruple gone, the danger of delay

written before me in huge characters. From that moment forth I seem not to have sat down or breathed. Now I

would be at my post with the Master and his Indian; now in the garret, buckling a valise; now sending forth

Macconochie by the side postern and the woodpath to bear it to the trystingplace; and, again, snatching

some words of counsel with my lady. This was the VERSO of our life in Durrisdeer that day; but on the

RECTO all appeared quite settled, as of a family at home in its paternal seat; and what perturbation may have

been observable, the Master would set down to the blow of his unlookedfor coming, and the fear he was

Supper went creditably off, cold salutations passed and the company trooped to their respective chambers. I

attended the Master to the last. We had put him next door to his Indian, in the north wing; because that was

the most distant and could be severed from the body of the house with doors. I saw he was a kind friend or a

good master (whichever it was) to his Secundra Dass seeing to his comfort; mending the fire with his own

hand, for the Indian complained of cold; inquiring as to the rice on which the stranger made his diet; talking

with him pleasantly in the Hindustanee, while I stood by, my candle in my hand, and affected to be overcome

with slumber. At length the Master observed my signals of distress. "I perceive," says he, "that you have all

Once in my own room, I made the customary motions of undressing, so that I might time myself; and when

the cycle was complete, set my tinderbox ready, and blew out my taper. The matter of an hour afterward I

made a light again, put on my shoes of list that I had worn by my lord's sickbed, and set forth into the house

to call the voyagers. All were dressed and waiting my lord, my lady, Miss Katharine, Mr. Alexander, my

lady's woman Christie; and I observed the effect of secrecy even upon quite innocent persons, that one after

another showed in the chink of the door a face as white as paper. We slipped out of the side postern into a

night of darkness, scarce broken by a star or two; so that at first we groped and stumbled and fell among the

bushes. A few hundred yards up the woodpath Macconochie was waiting us with a great lantern; so the rest

of the way we went easy enough, but still in a kind of guilty silence. A little beyond the abbey the path

debauched on the main road and some quarter of a mile farther, at the place called Eagles, where the moors

begin, we saw the lights of the two carriages stand shining by the wayside. Scarce a word or two was uttered

at our parting, and these regarded business: a silent grasping of hands, a turning of faces aside, and the thing

was over; the horses broke into a trot, the lamplight sped like Will o'theWisp upon the broken moorland,

it dipped beyond Stony Brae; and there were Macconochie and I alone with our lantern on the road. There

was one thing more to wait for, and that was the reappearance of the coach upon Cartmore. It seems they

must have pulled up upon the summit, looked back for a last time, and seen our lantern not yet moved away

from the place of separation. For a lamp was taken from a carriage, and waved three times up and down by

way of a farewell. And then they were gone indeed, having looked their last on the kind roof of Durrisdeer,

their faces toward a barbarous country. I never knew before, the greatness of that vault of night in which we

two poor servingmen the one old, and the one elderly stood for the first time deserted; I had never felt

before my own dependency upon the countenance of others. The sense of isolation burned in my bowels like

a fire. It seemed that we who remained at home were the true exiles, and that Durrisdeer and Solwayside, and

all that made my country native, its air good to me, and its language welcome, had gone forth and was far

The remainder of that night I paced to and fro on the smooth highway, reflecting on the future and the past.

My thoughts, which at first dwelled tenderly on those who were just gone, took a more manly temper as I

considered what remained for me to do. Day came upon the inland mountaintops, and the fowls began to

cry, and the smoke of homesteads to arise in the brown bosom of the moors, before I turned my face

homeward, and went down the path to where the roof of Durrisdeer shone in the morning by the sea.

At the customary hour I had the Master called, and awaited his coming in the hall with a quiet mind. He

"You and I and your friend Mr. Dass are now all the company," I replied. "My lord, my lady, and the

"Upon my word!" said he. "Can this be possible? I have indeed fluttered your Volscians in Corioli! But this is

no reason why our breakfast should go cold. Sit down, Mr. Mackellar, if you please" taking, as he spoke,

the head of the table, which I had designed to occupy myself "and as we eat, you can give me the details of

I could see he was more affected than his language carried, and I determined to equal him in coolness. "I was

about to ask you to take the head of the table," said I; "for though I am now thrust into the position of your

For a while he played the part of entertainer, giving directions to Macconochie, who received them with an

evil grace, and attending specially upon Secundra. "And where has my good family withdrawn to?" he asked

"Ah! Mr. Bally, that is another point," said I. "I have no orders to communicate their destination."

"It is the less pointed," said the master; "C'EST DE BON TON: my brother improves as he continues. And I,

"You will have bed and board, Mr. Bally," said I. "I am permitted to give you the run of the cellar, which is

pretty reasonably stocked. You have only to keep well with me, which is no very difficult matter, and you

"And for money?" he inquired. "Have I to keep well with my good friend Mackellar for my pocketmoney

"There was no allowance made," said I; "but I will take it on myself to see you are supplied in moderation."

"In moderation?" he repeated. "And you will take it on yourself?" He drew himself up, and looked about the

hall at the dark rows of portraits. "In the name of my ancestors, I thank you," says he; and then, with a return

to irony, "But there must certainly be an allowance for Secundra Dass?" he said. "It in not possible they have

And he, with a sudden change of manner, and leaning forward with an elbow on the table "Do you think

"Profoundly modest," said the Master; "perhaps not equally ingenuous. You told me yesterday my power was

fallen with my father's death. How comes it, then, that a peer of the realm flees under cloud of night out of a

house in which his fathers have stood several sieges? that he conceals his address, which must be a matter of

concern to his Gracious Majesty and to the whole republic? and that he should leave me in possession, and

under the paternal charge of his invaluable Mackellar? This smacks to me of a very considerable and genuine

I sought to interrupt him with some not very truthful denegation; but he waved me down, and pursued his

"I say, it smacks of it," he said; "but I will go beyond that, for I think the apprehension grounded. I came to

this house with some reluctancy. In view of the manner of my last departure, nothing but necessity could

have induced me to return. Money, however, is that which I must have. You will not give with a good grace;

well, I have the power to force it from you. Inside of a week, without leaving Durrisdeer, I will find out

where these fools are fled to. I will follow; and when I have run my quarry down, I will drive a wedge into

that family that shall once more burst it into shivers. I shall see then whether my Lord Durrisdeer" (said with

indescribable scorn and rage) "will choose to buy my absence; and you will all see whether, by that time, I

I was amazed to hear the man so open. The truth is, he was consumed with anger at my lord's successful

flight, felt himself to figure as a dupe, and was in no humour to weigh language.

"These twenty years I have lived by my poor wisdom," he answered with a smile that seemed almost foolish

"And come out a beggar in the end," said I, "if beggar be a strong enough word for it."

"I would have you to observe, Mr. Mackellar," cried he, with a sudden imperious heat, in which I could not

but admire him, "that I am scrupulously civil: copy me in that, and we shall be the better friends."

Throughout this dialogue I had been incommoded by the observation of Secundra Dass. Not one of us, since

the first word, had made a feint of eating: our eyes were in each other's faces you might say, in each other's

bosoms; and those of the Indian troubled me with a certain changing brightness, as of comprehension. But I

brushed the fancy aside, telling myself once more he understood no English; only, from the gravity of both

voices, and the occasional scorn and anger in the Master's, smelled out there was something of import in the

For the matter of three weeks we continued to live together in the house of Durrisdeer: the beginning of that

most singular chapter of my life what I must call my intimacy with the Master. At first he was somewhat

changeable in his behaviour: now civil, now returning to his old manner of flouting me to my face; and in

both I met him halfway. Thanks be to Providence, I had now no measure to keep with the man; and I was

never afraid of black brows, only of naked swords. So that I found a certain entertainment in these bouts of

incivility, and was not always illinspired in my rejoinders. At last (it was at supper) I had a droll expression

that entirely vanquished him. He laughed again and again; and "Who would have guessed," he cried, "that

"It is no wit, Mr. Bally," said I: "a dry Scot's humour, and something of the driest." And, indeed, I never had

From that hour he was never rude with me, but all passed between us in a manner of pleasantry. One of our

chief times of daffing (9) was when he required a horse, another bottle, or some money. He would approach

me then after the manner of a schoolboy, and I would carry it on by way of being his father: on both sides,

with an infinity of mirth. I could not but perceive that he thought more of me, which tickled that poor part of

mankind, the vanity. He dropped, besides (I must suppose unconsciously), into a manner that was not only

familiar, but even friendly; and this, on the part of one who had so long detested me, I found the more

insidious. He went little abroad; sometimes even refusing invitations. "No," he would say, "what do I care for

these thickheaded bonnetlairds? I will stay at home, Mackellar; and we shall share a bottle quietly, and

have one of our good talks." And, indeed, mealtime at Durrisdeer must have been a delight to any one, by

reason of the brilliancy of the discourse. He would often express wonder at his former indifference to my

society. "But, you see," he would add, "we were upon opposite sides. And so we are today; but let us never

speak of that. I would think much less of you if you were not staunch to your employer." You are to consider

he seemed to me quite impotent for any evil; and how it is a most engaging form of flattery when (after many

years) tardy justice is done to a man's character and parts. But I have no thought to excuse myself. I was to

blame; I let him cajole me, and, in short, I think the watchdog was going sound asleep, when he was

I should say the Indian was continually travelling to and fro in the house. He never spoke, save in his own

dialect and with the Master; walked without sound; and was always turning up where you would least expect

him, fallen into a deep abstraction, from which he would start (upon your coming) to mock you with one of

his grovelling obeisances. He seemed so quiet, so frail, and so wrapped in his own fancies, that I came to pass

him over without much regard, or even to pity him for a harmless exile from his country. And yet without

doubt the creature was still eavesdropping; and without doubt it was through his stealth and my security that

It was one very wild night, after supper, and when we had been making more than usually merry, that the

"This is all very fine," says the Master, "but we should do better to be buckling our valise."

"We are all leaving tomorrow in the morning," said he. "For the port of Glascow first, thence for the

"Yes," he continued, "I boasted; I said a week, and it has taken me near twenty days. But never mind; I shall

"Dear and ingenuous personage, I have," said he. "Blame me, if you choose, for my duplicity; but while I

have been wringing shillings from my daddy, I had a stock of my own put by against a rainy day. You will

pay for your own passage, if you choose to accompany us on our flank march; I have enough for Secundra

and myself, but not more enough to be dangerous, not enough to be generous. There is, however, an outside

seat upon the chaise which I will let you have upon a moderate commutation; so that the whole menagerie

"I count upon it," said the Master. "You have seen me foiled; I mean you shall see me victorious. To gain that

"Not easily," said he. "You put your finger on the point with your usual excellent good sense. I never fight

"And, at any rate, how much more expeditions that I should go myself!" says he. "But all this is quite a waste

of breath. At seven tomorrow the chaise will be at the door. For I start from the door, Mackellar; I do not

skulk through woods and take my chaise upon the wayside shall we say, at Eagles?"

My mind was now thoroughly made up. "Can you spare me quarter of an hour at St. Bride's?" said I. "I have

"An hour, if you prefer," said he. "I do not seek to deny that the money for your seat is an object to me; and

"This will be an ill journey for some one," I said. "I think, sir, for you. Something speaks in my bosom; and

There came up a violent squall off the open Solway, and the rain was dashed on the great windows.

"Do ye ken what that bodes, warlock?" said he, in a broad accent: "that there'll be a man Mackellar unco' sick

When I got to my chamber, I sat there under a painful excitation, hearkening to the turmoil of the gale, which

struck full upon that gable of the house. What with the pressure on my spirits, the eldritch cries of the wind

among the turrettops, and the perpetual trepidation of the masoned house, sleep fled my eyelids utterly. I sat

by my taper, looking on the black panes of the window, where the storm appeared continually on the point of

bursting in its entrance; and upon that empty field I beheld a perspective of consequences that made the hair

to rise upon my scalp. The child corrupted, the home broken up, my master dead or worse than dead, my

mistress plunged in desolation all these I saw before me painted brightly on the darkness; and the outcry of

The chaise came to the door in a strong drenching mist. We took our leave in silence: the house of Durrisdeer

standing with dropping gutters and windows closed, like a place dedicate to melancholy. I observed the

Master kept his head out, looking back on these splashed walls and glimmering roofs, till they were suddenly

swallowed in the mist; and I must suppose some natural sadness fell upon the man at this departure; or was it

some provision of the end? At least, upon our mounting the long brae from Durrisdeer, as we walked side by

side in the wet, he began first to whistle and then to sing the saddest of our country tunes, which sets folk

weeping in a tavern, WANDERING WILLIE. The set of words he used with it I have not heard elsewhere,

and could never come by any copy; but some of them which were the most appropriate to our departure linger

Home was home then, my dear, full of kindly faces, Home was home then, my dear, happy for the child.

Now, when day dawns on the brow of the moorland, Lone stands the house, and the chimneystone is cold.

Lone let it stand, now the folks are all departed, The kind hearts, the true hearts, that loved the place of old.

I could never be a judge of the merit of these verses; they were so hallowed by the melancholy of the air, and

were sung (or rather "soothed") to me by a mastersinger at a time so fitting. He looked in my face when he

"I do not think you could be so bad a man," said I, "if you had not all the machinery to be a good one."

"No, not all," says he: "not all. You are there in error. The malady of not wanting, my evangelist." But

All day long we journeyed in the same miserable weather: the mist besetting us closely, the heavens

incessantly weeping on my head. The road lay over moorish hills, where was no sound but the crying of

moorfowl in the wet heather and the pouring of the swollen burns. Sometimes I would doze off in slumber,

when I would find myself plunged at once in some foul and ominous nightmare, from the which I would

awake strangling. Sometimes, if the way was steep and the wheels turning slowly, I would overhear the

voices from within, talking in that tropical tongue which was to me as inarticulate as the piping of the fowls.

Sometimes, at a longer ascent, the Master would set foot to ground and walk by my side, mostly without

speech. And all the time, sleeping or waking, I beheld the same black perspective of approaching ruin; and

the same pictures rose in my view, only they were now painted upon hillside mist. One, I remember, stood

before me with the colours of a true illusion. It showed me my lord seated at a table in a small room; his head,

which was at first buried in his hands, he slowly raised, and turned upon me a countenance from which hope

had fled. I saw it first on the black windowpanes, my last night in Durrisdeer; it haunted and returned upon

me half the voyage through; and yet it was no effect of lunacy, for I have come to a ripe old age with no

decay of my intelligence; nor yet (as I was then tempted to suppose) a heavensent warning of the future, for

all manner of calamities befell, not that calamity and I saw many pitiful sights, but never that one.

It was decided we should travel on all night; and it was singular, once the dusk had fallen, my spirits

somewhat rose. The bright lamps, shining forth into the mist and on the smoking horses and the hodding

postboy, gave me perhaps an outlook intrinsically more cheerful than what day had shown; or perhaps my

mind had become wearied of its melancholy. At least, I spent some waking hours, not without satisfaction in

my thoughts, although wet and weary in my body; and fell at last into a natural slumber without dreams. Yet I

must have been at work even in the deepest of my sleep; and at work with at least a measure of intelligence.

stricken to find in it an appropriateness, which I had not yesterday observed, to the Master's detestable

We were then close upon the city of Glascow, where we were soon breakfasting together at an inn, and where

(as the devil would have it) we found a ship in the very article of sailing. We took our places in the cabin;

and, two days after, carried our effects on board. Her name was the NONESUCH, a very ancient ship and

very happily named. By all accounts this should be her last voyage; people shook their heads upon the quays,

and I had several warnings offered me by strangers in the street to the effect that she was rotten as a cheese,

too deeply loaden, and must infallibly founder if we met a gale. From this it fell out we were the only

passengers; the Captain, McMurtrie, was a silent, absorbed man, with the Glascow or Gaelic accent; the

mates ignorant rough seafarers, come in through the hawsehole; and the Master and I were cast upon each

THE NONESUCH carried a fair wind out of the Clyde, and for near upon a week we enjoyed bright weather

and a sense of progress. I found myself (to my wonder) a born seaman, in so far at least as I was never sick;

yet I was far from tasting the usual serenity of my health. Whether it was the motion of the ship on the

billows, the confinement, the salted food, or all of these together, I suffered from a blackness of spirit and a

painful strain upon my temper. The nature of my errand on that ship perhaps contributed; I think it did no

more; the malady (whatever it was) sprang from my environment; and if the ship were not to blame, then it

was the Master. Hatred and fear are ill bedfellows; but (to my shame be it spoken) I have tasted those in other

places, lain down and got up with them, and eaten and drunk with them, and yet never before, nor after, have

I been so poisoned through and through, in soul and body, as I was on board the NONESUCH. I freely

confess my enemy set me a fair example of forbearance; in our worst days displayed the most patient

geniality, holding me in conversation as long as I would suffer, and when I had rebuffed his civility,

stretching himself on deck to read. The book he had on board with him was Mr. Richardson's famous

CLARISSA! and among other small attentions he would read me passages aloud; nor could any elocutionist

have given with greater potency the pathetic portions of that work. I would retort upon him with passages out

of the Bible, which was all my library and very fresh to me, my religious duties (I grieve to say it) being

always and even to this day extremely neglected. He tasted the merits of the word like the connoisseur he

was; and would sometimes take it from my hand, turn the leaves over like a man that knew his way, and give

me, with his fine declamation, a Roland for my Oliver. But it was singular how little he applied his reading to

himself; it passed high above his head like summer thunder: Lovelace and Clarissa, the tales of David's

generosity, the psalms of his penitence, the solemn questions of the book of Job, the touching poetry of Isaiah

they were to him a source of entertainment only, like the scraping of a fiddle in a change house. This outer

sensibility and inner toughness set me against him; it seemed of a piece with that impudent grossness which I

knew to underlie the veneer of his fine manners; and sometimes my gorge rose against him as though he were

deformed and sometimes I would draw away as though from something partly spectral. I had moments

when I thought of him as of a man of pasteboard as though, if one should strike smartly through the

buckram of his countenance, there would be found a mere vacuity within. This horror (not merely fanciful, I

think) vastly increased my detestation of his neighbourhood; I began to feel something shiver within me on

his drawing near; I had at times a longing to cry out; there were days when I thought I could have struck him.

This frame of mind was doubtless helped by shame, because I had dropped during our last days at Durrisdeer

into a certain toleration of the man; and if any one had then told me I should drop into it again, I must have

laughed in his face. It is possible he remained unconscious of this extreme fever of my resentment; yet I think

he was too quick; and rather that he had fallen, in a long life of idleness, into a positive need of company,

which obliged him to confront and tolerate my unconcealed aversion. Certain, at least, that he loved the note

of his own tongue, as, indeed, he entirely loved all the parts and properties of himself; a sort of imbecility

which almost necessarily attends on wickedness. I have seen him driven, when I proved recalcitrant, to long

discourses with the skipper; and this, although the man plainly testified his weariness, fiddling miserably with

After the first week out we fell in with foul winds and heavy weather. The sea was high. The NONESUCH,

being an oldfashioned ship and badly loaden, rolled beyond belief; so that the skipper trembled for his

masts, and I for my life. We made no progress on our course. An unbearable illhumour settled on the ship:

men, mates, and master, girding at one another all day long. A saucy word on the one hand, and a blow on the

other, made a daily incident. There were times when the whole crew refused their duty; and we of the

afterguard were twice got under arms being the first time that ever I bore weapons in the fear of mutiny.

In the midst of our evil season sprang up a hurricane of wind; so that all supposed she must go down. I was

shut in the cabin from noon of one day till sundown of the next; the Master was somewhere lashed on deck.

Secundra had eaten of some drug and lay insensible; so you may say I passed these hours in an unbroken

solitude. At first I was terrified beyond motion, and almost beyond thought, my mind appearing to be frozen.

Presently there stole in on me a ray of comfort. If the NONESUCH foundered, she would carry down with

her into the deeps of that unsounded sea the creature whom we all so feared and hated; there would be no

more Master of Ballantrae, the fish would sport among his ribs; his schemes all brought to nothing, his

harmless enemies at peace. At first, I have said, it was but a ray of comfort; but it had soon grown to be broad

sunshine. The thought of the man's death, of his deletion from this world, which he embittered for so many,

took possession of my mind. I hugged it, I found it sweet in my belly. I conceived the ship's last plunge, the

sea bursting upon all sides into the cabin, the brief mortal conflict there, all by myself, in that closed place; I

numbered the horrors, I had almost said with satisfaction; I felt I could bear all and more, if the NONESUCH

carried down with her, overtook by the same ruin, the enemy of my poor master's house. Towards noon of the

second day the screaming of the wind abated; the ship lay not so perilously over, and it began to be clear to

me that we were past the height of the tempest. As I hope for mercy, I was singly disappointed. In the

selfishness of that vile, absorbing passion of hatred, I forgot the case of our innocent shipmates, and thought

but of myself and my enemy. For myself, I was already old; I had never been young, I was not formed for the

world's pleasures, I had few affections; it mattered not the toss of a silver tester whether I was drowned there

and then in the Atlantic, or dribbled out a few more years, to die, perhaps no less terribly, in a deserted

sickbed. Down I went upon my knees holding on by the locker, or else I had been instantly dashed across

the tossing cabin and, lifting up my voice in the midst of that clamour of the abating hurricane, impiously

prayed for my own death. "O God!" I cried, "I would be liker a man if I rose and struck this creature down;

but Thou madest me a coward from my mother's womb. O Lord, Thou madest me so, Thou knowest my

weakness, Thou knowest that any face of death will set me shaking in my shoes. But, lo! here is Thy servant

ready, his mortal weakness laid aside. Let me give my life for this creature's; take the two of them, Lord! take

the two, and have mercy on the innocent!" In some such words as these, only yet more irreverent and with

more sacred adjurations, I continued to pour forth my spirit. God heard me not, I must suppose in mercy; and

I was still absorbed in my agony of supplication when some one, removing the tarpaulin cover, let the light of

the sunset pour into the cabin. I stumbled to my feet ashamed, and was seized with surprise to find myself

totter and ache like one that had been stretched upon the rack. Secundra Dass, who had slept off the effects of

his drug, stood in a corner not far off, gazing at me with wild eyes; and from the open skylight the captain

"It's you that saved the ship, Mr. Mackellar," says he. "There is no craft of seamanship that could have kept

her floating: well may we say, 'Except the Lord the city keep, the watchmen watch in vain!'"

I was abashed by the captain's error; abashed, also, by the surprise and fear with which the Indian regarded

me at first, and the obsequious civilities with which he soon began to cumber me. I know now that he must

have overheard and comprehended the peculiar nature of my prayers. It is certain, of course, that he at once

disclosed the matter to his patron; and looking back with greater knowledge, I can now understand what so

much puzzled me at the moment, those singular and (so to speak) approving smiles with which the Master

honoured me. Similarly, I can understand a word that I remember to have fallen from him in conversation

that same night; when, holding up his hand and smiling, "Ah! Mackellar," said he, "not every man is so great

a coward as he thinks he is nor yet so good a Christian." He did not guess how true he spoke! For the fact

is, the thoughts which had come to me in the violence of the storm retained their hold upon my spirit; and the

words that rose to my lips unbidden in the instancy of prayer continued to sound in my ears: with what

shameful consequences, it is fitting I should honestly relate; for I could not support a part of such disloyalty

The wind fell, but the sea hove ever the higher. All night the NONESUCH rolled outrageously; the next day

dawned, and the next, and brought no change. To cross the cabin was scarce possible; old experienced

seamen were cast down upon the deck, and one cruelly mauled in the concussion; every board and block in

the old ship cried out aloud; and the great bell by the anchorbitts continually and dolefully rang. One of

these days the Master and I sate alone together at the break of the poop. I should say the NONESUCH carried

a high, raised poop. About the top of it ran considerable bulwarks, which made the ship unweatherly; and

these, as they approached the front on each side, ran down in a fine, old fashioned, carven scroll to join the

bulwarks of the waist. From this disposition, which seems designed rather for ornament than use, it followed

there was a discontinuance of protection: and that, besides, at the very margin of the elevated part where (in

certain movements of the ship) it might be the most needful. It was here we were sitting: our feet hanging

down, the Master betwixt me and the side, and I holding on with both hands to the grating of the cabin

skylight; for it struck me it was a dangerous position, the more so as I had continually before my eyes a

measure of our evolutions in the person of the Master, which stood out in the break of the bulwarks against

the sun. Now his head would be in the zenith and his shadow fall quite beyond the NONESUCH on the

farther side; and now he would swing down till he was underneath my feet, and the line of the sea leaped high

above him like the ceiling of a room. I looked on upon this with a growing fascination, as birds are said to

look on snakes. My mind, besides, was troubled with an astonishing diversity of noises; for now that we had

all sails spread in the vain hope to bring her to the sea, the ship sounded like a factory with their

reverberations. We spoke first of the mutiny with which we had been threatened; this led us on to the topic of

assassination; and that offered a temptation to the Master more strong than he was able to resist. He must tell

me a tale, and show me at the same time how clever he was and how wicked. It was a thing he did always

with affectation and display; generally with a good effect. But this tale, told in a high key in the midst of so

great a tumult, and by a narrator who was one moment looking down at me from the skies and the next up

from under the soles of my feet this particular tale, I say, took hold upon me in a degree quite singular.

"My friend the count," it was thus that he began his story, "had for an enemy a certain German baron, a

stranger in Rome. It matters not what was the ground of the count's enmity; but as he had a firm design to be

revenged, and that with safety to himself, he kept it secret even from the baron. Indeed, that is the first

principle of vengeance; and hatred betrayed is hatred impotent. The count was a man of a curious, searching

mind; he had something of the artist; if anything fell for him to do, it must always be done with an exact

perfection, not only as to the result, but in the very means and instruments, or he thought the thing miscarried.

It chanced he was one day riding in the outer suburbs, when he came to a disused byroad branching off into

the moor which lies about Rome. On the one hand was an ancient Roman tomb; on the other a deserted house

in a garden of evergreen trees. This road brought him presently into a field of ruins, in the midst of which, in

the side of a hill, he saw an open door, and, not far off, a single stunted pine no greater than a currantbush.

The place was desert and very secret; a voice spoke in the count's bosom that there was something here to his

advantage. He tied his horse to the pine tree, took his flint and steel in his hand to make a light, and entered

into the hill. The doorway opened on a passage of old Roman masonry, which shortly after branched in two.

The count took the turning to the right, and followed it, groping forward in the dark, till he was brought up by

a kind of fence, about elbowhigh, which extended quite across the passage. Sounding forward with his foot,

he found an edge of polished stone, and then vacancy. All his curiosity was now awakened, and, getting some

rotten sticks that lay about the floor, he made a fire. In front of him was a profound well; doubtless some

neighbouring peasant had once used it for his water, and it was he that had set up the fence. A long while the

count stood leaning on the rail and looking down into the pit. It was of Roman foundation, and, like all that

nation set their hands to, built as for eternity; the sides were still straight, and the joints smooth; to a man who

should fall in, no escape was possible. 'Now,' the count was thinking, 'a strong impulsion brought me to this

place. What for? what have I gained? why should I be sent to gaze into this well?' when the rail of the fence

gave suddenly under his weight, and he came within an ace of falling headlong in. Leaping back to save

himself, he trod out the last flicker of his fire, which gave him thenceforward no more light, only an

incommoding smoke. 'Was I sent here to my death?' says he, and shook from head to foot. And then a

thought flashed in his mind. He crept forth on hands and knees to the brink of the pit, and felt above him in

the air. The rail had been fast to a pair of uprights; it had only broken from the one, and still depended from

the other. The count set it back again as he had found it, so that the place meant death to the first comer, and

groped out of the catacomb like a sick man. The next day, riding in the Corso with the baron, he purposely

betrayed a strong preoccupation. The other (as he had designed) inquired into the cause; and he, after some

fencing, admitted that his spirits had been dashed by an unusual dream. This was calculated to draw on the

baron a superstitious man, who affected the scorn of superstition. Some rallying followed, and then the

count, as if suddenly carried away, called on his friend to beware, for it was of him that he had dreamed. You

know enough of human nature, my excellent Mackellar, to be certain of one thing: I mean that the baron did

not rest till he had heard the dream. The count, sure that he would never desist, kept him in play till his

curiosity was highly inflamed, and then suffered himself, with seeming reluctance, to be overborne. 'I warn

you,' says he, 'evil will come of it; something tells me so. But since there is to be no peace either for you or

me except on this condition, the blame be on your own head! This was the dream: I beheld you riding, I

know not where, yet I think it must have been near Rome, for on your one hand was an ancient tomb, and on

the other a garden of evergreen trees. Methought I cried and cried upon you to come back in a very agony of

terror; whether you heard me I know not, but you went doggedly on. The road brought you to a desert place

among ruins, where was a door in a hillside, and hard by the door a misbegotten pine. Here you dismounted (I

still crying on you to beware), tied your horse to the pinetree, and entered resolutely in by the door. Within,

it was dark; but in my dream I could still see you, and still besought you to hold back. You felt your way

along the righthand wall, took a branching passage to the right, and came to a little chamber, where was a

well with a railing. At this I know not why my alarm for you increased a thousandfold, so that I seemed

to scream myself hoarse with warnings, crying it was still time, and bidding you begone at once from that

vestibule. Such was the word I used in my dream, and it seemed then to have a clear significancy; but today,

and awake, I profess I know not what it means. To all my outcry you rendered not the least attention, leaning

the while upon the rail and looking down intently in the water. And then there was made to you a

communication; I do not think I even gathered what it was, but the fear of it plucked me clean out of my

slumber, and I awoke shaking and sobbing. And now,' continues the count, 'I thank you from my heart for

your insistency. This dream lay on me like a load; and now I have told it in plain words and in the broad

daylight, it seems no great matter.' 'I do not know,' says the baron. 'It is in some points strange. A

communication, did you say? Oh! it is an odd dream. It will make a story to amuse our friends.' 'I am not so

sure,' says the count. 'I am sensible of some reluctancy. Let us rather forget it.' 'By all means,' says the

baron. And (in fact) the dream was not again referred to. Some days after, the count proposed a ride in the

fields, which the baron (since they were daily growing faster friends) very readily accepted. On the way back

to Rome, the count led them insensibly by a particular route. Presently he reined in his horse, clapped his

hand before his eyes, and cried out aloud. Then he showed his face again (which was now quite white, for he

was a consummate actor), and stared upon the baron. 'What ails you?' cries the baron. 'What is wrong with

you?' 'Nothing,' cries the count. 'It is nothing. A seizure, I know not what. Let us hurry back to Rome.' But

in the meanwhile the baron had looked about him; and there, on the lefthand side of the way as they went

back to Rome, he saw a dusty byroad with a tomb upon the one hand and a garden of evergreen trees upon

the other. 'Yes,' says he, with a changed voice. 'Let us by all means hurry back to Rome. I fear you are not

well in health.' 'Oh, for God's sake!' cries the count, shuddering, 'back to Rome and let me get to bed.' They

made their return with scarce a word; and the count, who should by rights have gone into society, took to his

bed and gave out he had a touch of country fever. The next day the baron's horse was found tied to the pine,

but himself was never heard of from that hour. And, now, was that a murder?" says the Master, breaking

"I am not certain of the title," said he, "but he was a gentleman of family: and the Lord deliver you,

These last words he spoke down at me, smiling, from high above; the next, he was under my feet. I continued

to follow his evolutions with a childish fixity; they made me giddy and vacant, and I spoke as in a dream.

"Verily!" cries the Master. "Here is news indeed! I wonder do I flatter myself? or am I the cause of these

He was quite capable of choosing out a graceful posture, even with no one to behold him but myself, and all

the more if there were any element of peril. He sat now with one knee flung across the other, his arms on his

bosom, fitting the swing of the ship with an exquisite balance, such as a featherweight might overthrow. All

at once I had the vision of my lord at the table, with his head upon his hands; only now, when he showed me

his countenance, it was heavy with reproach. The words of my own prayer I WERE LIKER A MAN IF I

STRUCK THIS CREATURE DOWN shot at the same time into my memory. I called my energies

together, and (the ship then heeling downward toward my enemy) thrust at him swiftly with my foot. It was

written I should have the guilt of this attempt without the profit. Whether from my own uncertainty or his

incredible quickness, he escaped the thrust, leaping to his feet and catching hold at the same moment of a

I do not know how long a time passed by. I lying where I was upon the deck, overcome with terror and

remorse and shame: he standing with the stay in his hand, backed against the bulwarks, and regarding me

"Mackellar," said he, "I make no reproaches, but I offer you a bargain. On your side, I do not suppose you

desire to have this exploit made public; on mine, I own to you freely I do not care to draw my breath in a

perpetual terror of assassination by the man I sit at meat with. Promise me but no," says he, breaking off,

"you are not yet in the quiet possession of your mind; you might think I had extorted the promise from your

weakness; and I would leave no door open for casuistry to come in that dishonesty of the conscientious.

With that he made off up the sliding deck like a squirrel, and plunged into the cabin. About half an hour later

"Now,' says be, "will you give me your troth as a Christian, and a faithful servant of my brother's, that I shall

"Hold on!" cried I, covering my eyes. "I cannot bear to see you in that posture. The least irregularity of the

"You are highly inconsistent," he replied, smiling, but doing as I asked. "For all that, Mackellar, I would have

you to know you have risen forty feet in my esteem. You think I cannot set a price upon fidelity? But why do

you suppose I carry that Secundra Dass about the world with me? Because he would die or do murder for me

to morrow; and I love him for it. Well, you may think it odd, but I like you the better for this afternoon's

performance. I thought you were magnetised with the Ten Commandments; but no God damn my soul!"

he cries, "the old wife has blood in his body after all! Which does not change the fact," he continued, smiling

again, "that you have done well to give your promise; for I doubt if you would ever shine in your new trade."

"I suppose," said I, "I should ask your pardon and God's for my attempt. At any rate, I have passed my word,

which I will keep faithfully. But when I think of those you persecute " I paused.

"Life is a singular thing," said he, "and mankind a very singular people. You suppose yourself to love my

brother. I assure you, it is merely custom. Interrogate your memory; and when first you came to Durrisdeer,

you will find you considered him a dull, ordinary youth. He is as dull and ordinary now, though not so young.

"I would never say you were ordinary, Mr. Bally," I returned; "but here you prove yourself dull. You have

just shown your reliance on my word. In other terms, that is my conscience the same which starts

"Ah!" says he, "but I mean otherwise. I mean, had I met you in my youth. You are to consider I was not

always as I am today; nor (had I met in with a friend of your description) should I have ever been so."

"Hut, Mr. Bally," says I, "you would have made a mock of me; you would never have spent ten civil words

But he was now fairly started on his new course of justification, with which he wearied me throughout the

remainder of the passage. No doubt in the past he had taken pleasure to paint himself unnecessarily black,

and made a vaunt of his wickedness, bearing it for a coatofarms. Nor was he so illogical as to abate one

item of his old confessions. "But now that I know you are a human being," he would say, "I can take the

trouble to explain myself. For I assure you I am human, too, and have my virtues, like my neighbours." I say,

he wearied me, for I had only the one word to say in answer: twenty times I must have said it: "Give up your

Thereupon he would shake his head at me. "Ah! Mackellar, you might live a thousand years and never

understand my nature," he would say. "This battle is now committed, the hour of reflection quite past, the

hour for mercy not yet come. It began between us when we span a coin in the hall of Durrisdeer, now twenty

years ago; we have had our ups and downs, but never either of us dreamed of giving in; and as for me, when

"A fig for your honour!" I would say. "And by your leave, these warlike similitudes are something too

highsounding for the matter in hand. You want some dirty money; there is the bottom of your contention;

and as for your means, what are they? to stir up sorrow in a family that never harmed you, to debauch (if you

can) your own nephew, and to wring the heart of your born brother! A footpad that kills an old granny in a

woollen mutch with a dirty bludgeon, and that for a shillingpiece and a paper of snuff there is all the

When I would attack him thus (or somewhat thus) he would smile, and sigh like a man misunderstood. Once,

I remember, he defended himself more at large, and had some curious sophistries, worth repeating, for a light

"You are very like a civilian to think war consists in drums and banners," said he. "War (as the ancients said

very wisely) is ULTIMA RATIO. When we take our advantage unrelentingly, then we make war. Ah!

Mackellar, you are a devil of a soldier in the steward's room at Durrisdeer, or the tenants do you sad

"I think little of what war is or is not," I replied. "But you weary me with claiming my respect. Your brother

"It is so we all dupe ourselves," I cried. "Had I been St. Paul, it would have been all one; I would have made

"I tell you," he cried, bearing down my interruption, "had I been the least petty chieftain in the Highlands,

had I been the least king of naked negroes in the African desert, my people would have adored me. A bad

man, am I? Ah! but I was born for a good tyrant! Ask Secundra Dass; he will tell you I treat him like a son.

Cast in your lot with me tomorrow, become my slave, my chattel, a thing I can command as I command the

powers of my own limbs and spirit you will see no more that dark side that I turn upon the world in anger. I

must have all or none. But where all is given, I give it back with usury. I have a kingly nature: there is my

"It has been hitherto rather the loss of others," I remarked, "which seems a little on the hither side of royalty."

"Tillyvally!" cried he. "Even now, I tell you, I would spare that family in which you take so great an

interest: yes, even now to morrow I would leave them to their petty welfare, and disappear in that forest of

cutthroats and thimbleriggers that we call the world. I would do it tomorrow!" says he. "Only only "

"Only they must beg it on their bended knees. I think in public, too," he added, smiling. "Indeed, Mackellar, I

doubt if there be a hall big enough to serve my purpose for that act of reparation."

"Vanity, vanity!" I moralised. "To think that this great force for evil should be swayed by the same sentiment

"Oh! there are double words for everything: the word that swells, the word that belittles; you cannot fight me

with a word!" said he. "You said the other day that I relied on your conscience: were I in your humour of

detraction, I might say I built upon your vanity. It is your pretension to be UN HOMME DE PAROLE; 'tis

mine not to accept defeat. Call it vanity, call it virtue, call it greatness of soul what signifies the expression?

It will be gathered from so much familiar talk, and so much patience on both sides, that we now lived

together upon excellent terms. Such was again the fact, and this time more seriously than before. Apart from

disputations such as that which I have tried to reproduce, not only consideration reigned, but, I am tempted to

say, even kindness. When I fell sick (as I did shortly after our great storm), he sat by my berth to entertain me

with his conversation, and treated me with excellent remedies, which I accepted with security. Himself

commented on the circumstance. "You see," says he, "you begin to know me better. A very little while ago,

upon this lonely ship, where no one but myself has any smattering of science, you would have made sure I

had designs upon your life. And, observe, it is since I found you had designs upon my own, that I have shown

you most respect. You will tell me if this speaks of a small mind." I found little to reply. In so far as regarded

myself, I believed him to mean well; I am, perhaps, the more a dupe of his dissimulation, but I believed (and I

still believe) that he regarded me with genuine kindness. Singular and sad fact! so soon as this change began,

my animosity abated, and these haunting visions of my master passed utterly away. So that, perhaps, there

was truth in the man's last vaunting word to me, uttered on the second day of July, when our long voyage was

at last brought almost to an end, and we lay becalmed at the sea end of the vast harbour of New York, in a

gasping heat, which was presently exchanged for a surprising waterfall of rain. I stood on the poop, regarding

the green shores near at hand, and now and then the light smoke of the little town, our destination. And as I

was even then devising how to steal a march on my familiar enemy, I was conscious of a shade of

"I am now to bid you farewell," said he, "and that for ever. For now you go among my enemies, where all

your former prejudices will revive. I never yet failed to charm a person when I wanted; even you, my good

friend to call you so for once even you have now a very different portrait of me in your memory, and one

that you will never quite forget. The voyage has not lasted long enough, or I should have wrote the

impression deeper. But now all is at an end, and we are again at war. Judge by this little interlude how

dangerous I am; and tell those fools" pointing with his finger to the town "to think twice and thrice before

I have mentioned I was resolved to steal a march upon the Master; and this, with the complicity of Captain

McMurtrie, was mighty easily effected: a boat being partly loaded on the one side of our ship and the Master

placed on board of it, the while a skiff put off from the other, carrying me alone. I had no more trouble in

finding a direction to my lord's house, whither I went at top speed, and which I found to be on the outskirts of

the place, a very suitable mansion, in a fine garden, with an extraordinary large barn, byre, and stable, all in

one. It was here my lord was walking when I arrived; indeed, it had become his chief place of frequentation,

and his mind was now filled with farming. I burst in upon him breathless, and gave him my news: which was

indeed no news at all, several ships having outsailed the NONESUCH in the interval.

"We have been expecting you long," said my lord; "and indeed, of late days, ceased to expect you any more. I

am glad to take your hand again, Mackellar. I thought you had been at the bottom of the sea."

"Ah! my lord, would God I had!" cried I. "Things would have been better for yourself."

"Not in the least," says he, grimly. "I could not ask better. There is a long score to pay, and now at last I

"Oh!" says he, "this is not Durrisdeer, and I have taken my precautions. His reputation awaits him; I have

prepared a welcome for my brother. Indeed, fortune has served me; for I found here a merchant of Albany

who knew him after the '45 and had mighty convenient suspicions of a murder: some one of the name of

Chew it was, another Albanian. No one here will be surprised if I deny him my door; he will not be suffered

to address my children, nor even to salute my wife: as for myself, I make so much exception for a brother that

he may speak to me. I should lose my pleasure else," says my lord, rubbing his palms.

Presently he bethought himself, and set men off running, with billets, to summon the magnates of the

province. I cannot recall what pretext he employed; at least, it was successful; and when our ancient enemy

appeared upon the scene, he found my lord pacing in front of his house under some trees of shade, with the

Governor upon one hand and various notables upon the other. My lady, who was seated in the verandah, rose

The Master, well dressed and with an elegant walkingsword, bowed to the company in a handsome manner

and nodded to my lord with familiarity. My lord did not accept the salutation, but looked upon his brother

"Well, sir," says he, at last, "what ill wind brings you hither of all places, where (to our common disgrace)

"I am pleased to be very plain," returned my lord; "because it is needful you should clearly understand your

situation. At home, where you were so little known, it was still possible to keep appearances; that would be

quite vain in this province; and I have to tell you that I am quite resolved to wash my hands of you. You have

already ruined me almost to the door, as you ruined my father before me; whose heart you also broke. Your

crimes escape the law; but my friend the Governor has promised protection to my family. Have a care, sir!"

cries my lord, shaking his cane at him: "if you are observed to utter two words to any of my innocent

"Ah!" says the Master, very slowly. "And so this is the advantage of a foreign land! These gentlemen are

unacquainted with our story, I perceive. They do not know that I am the Lord Durrisdeer; they do not know

you are my younger brother, sitting in my place under a sworn family compact; they do not know (or they

would not be seen with you in familiar correspondence) that every acre is mine before God Almighty and

every doit of the money you withhold from me, you do it as a thief, a perjurer, and a disloyal brother!"

"General Clinton," I cried, "do not listen to his lies. I am the steward of the estate, and there is not one word

of truth in it. The man is a forfeited rebel turned into a hired spy: there is his story in two words."

"Fellow," said the Governor, turning his face sternly on the Master, "I know more of you than you think for.

We have some broken ends of your adventures in the provinces, which you will do very well not to drive me

to investigate. There is the disappearance of Mr. Jacob Chew with all his merchandise; there is the matter of

where you came ashore from with so much money and jewels, when you were picked up by a Bermudan out

of Albany. Believe me, if I let these matters lie, it is in commiseration for your family and out of respect for

"I should have remembered how a title would shine out in such a hole as this," says the Master, white as a

sheet: "no matter how unjustly come by. It remains for me, then, to die at my lord's door, where my dead

"Away with your affectations!" cries my lord. "You know very well I have no such meaning; only to protect

myself from calumny, and my home from your intrusion. I offer you a choice. Either I shall pay your passage

home on the first ship, when you may perhaps be able to resume your occupations under Government,

although God knows I would rather see you on the highway! Or, if that likes you not, stay here and welcome!

I have inquired the least sum on which body and soul can be decently kept together in New York; so much

you shall have, paid weekly; and if you cannot labour with your hands to better it, high time you should

betake yourself to learn. The condition is that you speak with no member of my family except myself," he

I do not think I have ever seen any man so pale as was the Master; but he was erect and his mouth firm.

"I have been met here with some very unmerited insults," said he, "from which I have certainly no idea to

take refuge by flight. Give me your pittance; I take it without shame, for it is mine already like the shirt

upon your back; and I choose to stay until these gentlemen shall understand me better. Already they must spy

the cloven hoof, since with all your pretended eagerness for the family honour, you take a pleasure to degrade

"This is all very fine," says my lord; "but to us who know you of old, you must be sure it signifies nothing.

You take that alternative out of which you think that you can make the most. Take it, if you can, in silence; it

will serve you better in the long run, you may believe me, than this ostentation of ingratitude."

"Oh, gratitude, my lord!" cries the Master, with a mounting intonation and his forefinger very conspicuously

lifted up. "Be at rest: it will not fail you. It now remains that I should salute these gentlemen whom we have

And he bowed to each in succession, settled his walkingsword, and took himself off, leaving every one

We were now to enter on a changed phase of this family division. The Master was by no manner of means so

helpless as my lord supposed, having at his hand, and entirely devoted to his service, an excellent artist in all

sorts of goldsmith work. With my lord's allowance, which was not so scanty as he had described it, the pair

could support life; and all the earnings of Secundra Dass might be laid upon one side for any future purpose.

That this was done, I have no doubt. It was in all likelihood the Master's design to gather a sufficiency, and

then proceed in quest of that treasure which he had buried long before among the mountains; to which, if he

had confined himself, he would have been more happily inspired. But unfortunately for himself and all of us,

he took counsel of his anger. The public disgrace of his arrival which I sometimes wonder he could manage

to survive rankled in his bones; he was in that humour when a man in the words of the old adage will

cut off his nose to spite his face; and he must make himself a public spectacle in the hopes that some of the

He chose, in a poor quarter of the town, a lonely, small house of boards, overhung with some acacias. It was

furnished in front with a sort of hutch opening, like that of a dog's kennel, but about as high as a table from

the ground, in which the poor man that built it had formerly displayed some wares; and it was this which took

the Master's fancy and possibly suggested his proceedings. It appears, on board the pirate ship he had

acquired some quickness with the needle enough, at least, to play the part of tailor in the public eye; which

was all that was required by the nature of his vengeance. A placard was hung above the hutch, bearing these

Underneath this, when he had a job, my gentleman sat withinside tailorwise and busily stitching. I say,

when he had a job; but such customers as came were rather for Secundra, and the Master's sewing would be

more in the manner of Penelope's. He could never have designed to gain even butter to his bread by such a

means of livelihood: enough for him that there was the name of Durie dragged in the dirt on the placard, and

the sometime heir of that proud family set up crosslegged in public for a reproach upon his brother's

meanness. And in so far his device succeeded that there was murmuring in the town and a party formed

highly inimical to my lord. My lord's favour with the Governor laid him more open on the other side; my lady

(who was never so well received in the colony) met with painful innuendoes; in a party of women, where it

would be the topic most natural to introduce, she was almost debarred from the naming of needlework; and

I have seen her return with a flushed countenance and vow that she would go abroad no more.

In the meanwhile my lord dwelled in his decent mansion, immersed in farming; a popular man with his

intimates, and careless or unconscious of the rest. He laid on flesh; had a bright, busy face; even the heat

seemed to prosper with him; and my lady in despite of her own annoyances daily blessed Heaven her

father should have left her such a paradise. She had looked on from a window upon the Master's humiliation;

and from that hour appeared to feel at ease. I was not so sure myself; as time went on, there seemed to me a

something not quite wholesome in my lord's condition. Happy he was, beyond a doubt, but the grounds of

this felicity were wont; even in the bosom of his family he brooded with manifest delight upon some private

thought; and I conceived at last the suspicion (quite unworthy of us both) that he kept a mistress somewhere

in the town. Yet he went little abroad, and his day was very fully occupied; indeed, there was but a single

period, and that pretty early in the morning, while Mr. Alexander was at his lessonbook, of which I was not

certain of the disposition. It should be borne in mind, in the defence of that which I now did, that I was

always in some fear my lord was not quite justly in his reason; and with our enemy sitting so still in the same

town with us, I did well to be upon my guard. Accordingly I made a pretext, had the hour changed at which I

taught Mr. Alexander the foundation of cyphering and the mathematic, and set myself instead to dog my

Every morning, fair or foul, he took his goldheaded cane, set his hat on the back of his head a recent

habitude, which I thought to indicate a burning brow and betook himself to make a certain circuit. At the

first his way was among pleasant trees and beside a graveyard, where he would sit awhile, if the day were

fine, in meditation. Presently the path turned down to the waterside, and came back along the harbourfront

and past the Master's booth. As he approached this second part of his circuit, my Lord Durrisdeer began to

pace more leisurely, like a man delighted with the air and scene; and before the booth, halfway between that

and the water's edge, would pause a little, leaning on his staff. It was the hour when the Master sate within

upon his board and plied his needle. So these two brothers would gaze upon each other with hard faces; and

It was but twice that I must stoop to that ungrateful necessity of playing spy. I was then certain of my lord's

purpose in his rambles and of the secret source of his delight. Here was his mistress: it was hatred and not

love that gave him healthful colours. Some moralists might have been relieved by the discovery; I confess

that I was dismayed. I found this situation of two brethren not only odious in itself, but big with possibilities

of further evil; and I made it my practice, in so far as many occupations would allow, to go by a shorter path

and be secretly present at their meeting. Coming down one day a little late, after I had been near a week

prevented, I was struck with surprise to find a new development. I should say there was a bench against the

Master's house, where customers might sit to parley with the shopman; and here I found my lord seated,

nursing his cane and looking pleasantly forth upon the bay. Not three feet from him sate the Master, stitching.

Neither spoke; nor (in this new situation) did my lord so much as cut a glance upon his enemy. He tasted his

neighbourhood, I must suppose, less indirectly in the bare proximity of person; and, without doubt, drank

He had no sooner come away than I openly joined him. "My lord, my lord," said I, "this is no manner of

"I grow fat upon it," he replied; and not merely the words, which were strange enough, but the whole

"I warn you, my lord, against this indulgency of evil feeling," said I. "I know not to which it is more perilous,

"You cannot understand," said he. "You had never such mountains of bitterness upon your heart."

"And if it were no more," I added, "you will surely goad the man to some extremity."

Every morning for hard upon a week my lord took his same place upon the bench. It was a pleasant place,

under the green acacias, with a sight upon the bay and shipping, and a sound (from some way off) of marines

singing at their employ. Here the two sate without speech or any external movement, beyond that of the

needle or the Master biting off a thread, for he still clung to his pretence of industry; and here I made a point

to join them, wondering at myself and my companions. If any of my lord's friends went by, he would hail

them cheerfully, and cry out he was there to give some good advice to his brother, who was now (to his

delight) grown quite industrious. And even this the Master accepted with a steady countenance; what was in

All of a sudden, on a still day of what they call the Indian Summer, when the woods were changed into gold

and pink and scarlet, the Master laid down his needle and burst into a fit of merriment. I think he must have

been preparing it a long while in silence, for the note in itself was pretty naturally pitched; but breaking

suddenly from so extreme a silence, and in circumstances so averse from mirth, it sounded ominously on my

"Henry," said he, "I have for once made a false step, and for once you have had the wit to profit by it. The

farce of the cobbler ends today; and I confess to you (with my compliments) that you have had the best of it.

Blood will out; and you have certainly a choice idea of how to make yourself unpleasant."

Never a word said my lord; it was just as though the Master had not broken silence.

"Come," resumed the Master, "do not be sulky; it will spoil your attitude. You can now afford (believe me) to

be a little gracious; for I have not merely a defeat to accept. I had meant to continue this performance till I

had gathered enough money for a certain purpose; I confess ingenuously, I have not the courage. You

naturally desire my absence from this town; I have come round by another way to the same idea. And I have

"You may have heard that I had once in this country a considerable treasure," returned the Master; "it matters

not whether or no such is the fact; and I was obliged to bury it in a spot of which I have sufficient

indications. To the recovery of this, has my ambition now come down; and, as it is my own, you will not

"Yes," said the Master; "but to do so, I must find men and carriage. The way is long and rough, and the

country infested with wild Indians. Advance me only so much as shall be needful: either as a lump sum, in

lieu of my allowance; or, if you prefer it, as a loan, which I shall repay on my return. And then, if you so

My lord stared him steadily in the eyes; there was a hard smile upon his face, but he uttered nothing.

"Henry," said the Master, with a formidable quietness, and drawing at the same time somewhat back

"Let us be stepping homeward," says my lord to me, who was plucking at his sleeve; and with that he rose,

stretched himself, settled his hat, and still without a syllable of response, began to walk steadily along the

I hesitated awhile between the two brothers, so serious a climax did we seem to have reached. But the Master

had resumed his occupation, his eyes lowered, his hand seemingly as deft as ever; and I decided to pursue my

"Are you mad?" I cried, so soon as I had overtook him. "Would you cast away so fair an opportunity?"

"Is it possible you should still believe in him?" inquired my lord, almost with a sneer.

"I wish him forth of this town!" I cried. "I wish him anywhere and anyhow but as he is."

"I have said my say," returned my lord, "and you have said yours. There let it rest."

But I was bent on dislodging the Master. That sight of him patiently returning to his needlework was more

than my imagination could digest. There was never a man made, and the Master the least of any, that could

accept so long a series of insults. The air smelt blood to me. And I vowed there should be no neglect of mine

if, through any chink of possibility, crime could be yet turned aside. That same day, therefore, I came to my

"My lord," said I, "I have found a suitable investment for my small economies. But these are unhappily in

Scotland; it will take some time to lift them, and the affair presses. Could your lordship see his way to

He read me awhile with keen eyes. "I have never inquired into the state of your affairs, Mackellar," says he.

"Beyond the amount of your caution, you may not be worth a farthing, for what I know."

"I have been a long while in your service, and never told a lie, nor yet asked a favour for myself," said I,

"A favour for the Master," he returned, quietly. "Do you take me for a fool, Mackellar? Understand it once

and for all, I treat this beast in my own way; fear nor favour shall not move me; and before I am hoodwinked,

it will require a trickster less transparent than yourself. I ask service, loyal service; not that you should make

"Think once more, Mackellar," he replied; "and you will see they fit the fact. It is your own subterfuge that is

unpardonable. Deny (if you can) that you designed this money to evade my orders with, and I will ask your

pardon freely. If you cannot, you must have the resolution to hear your conduct go by its own name."

"Oh! my old friend," said he, "you know very well what I think! Here is my hand to you with all my heart;

Defeated upon this side, I went straight to my room, wrote a letter, ran with it to the harbour, for I knew a

ship was on the point of sailing; and came to the Master's door a little before dusk. Entering without the form

of any knock, I found him sitting with his Indian at a simple meal of maize porridge with some milk. The

house within was clean and poor; only a few books upon a shelf distinguished it, and (in one corner)

"Mr. Bally," said I, "I have near five hundred pounds laid by in Scotland, the economies of a hard life. A

letter goes by yon ship to have it lifted. Have so much patience till the return ship comes in, and it is all

He rose from the table, came forward, took me by the shoulders, and looked me in the face, smiling.

"And yet you are very fond of money!" said he. "And yet you love money beyond all things else, except my

"I will never quarrel for a name. Call it so," he replied. "Ah! Mackellar, Mackellar, if this were done from any

"And yet," I eagerly answered "I say it to my shame, but I cannot see you in this poor place without

compunction. It is not my single thought, nor my first; and yet it's there! I would gladly see you delivered. I

do not offer it in love, and far from that; but, as God judges me and I wonder at it too! quite without

"Ah!" says he, still holding my shoulders, and now gently shaking me, "you think of me more than you

suppose. 'And I wonder at it too,'" he added, repeating my expression and, I suppose, something of my voice.

"Spare you," he repeated, letting me go and turning away. And then, fronting me once more. "You little know

what I would do with it, Mackellar! Did you think I had swallowed my defeat indeed? Listen: my life has

been a series of unmerited castbacks. That fool, Prince Charlie, mismanaged a most promising affair: there

fell my first fortune. In Paris I had my foot once more high upon the ladder: that time it was an accident; a

letter came to the wrong hand, and I was bare again. A third time, I found my opportunity; I built up a place

for myself in India with an infinite patience; and then Clive came, my rajah was swallowed up, and I escaped

out of the convulsion, like another AEneas, with Secundra Dass upon my back. Three times I have had my

hand upon the highest station: and I am not yet threeandforty. I know the world as few men know it when

they come to die Court and camp, the East and the West; I know where to go, I see a thousand openings. I

am now at the height of my resources, sound of health, of inordinate ambition. Well, all this I resign; I care

not if I die, and the world never hear of me; I care only for one thing, and that I will have. Mind yourself; lest,

As I came out of his house, all hope of intervention quite destroyed, I was aware of a stir on the harbourside,

and, raising my eyes, there was a great ship newly come to anchor. It seems strange I could have looked upon

her with so much indifference, for she brought death to the brothers of Durrisdeer. After all the desperate

episodes of this contention, the insults, the opposing interests, the fraternal duel in the shrubbery, it was

reserved for some poor devil in Grub Street, scribbling for his dinner, and not caring what he scribbled, to

cast a spell across four thousand miles of the salt sea, and send forth both these brothers into savage and

wintry deserts, there to die. But such a thought was distant from my mind; and while all the provincials were

fluttered about me by the unusual animation of their port, I passed throughout their midst on my return

homeward, quite absorbed in the recollection of my visit and the Master's speech.

The same night there was brought to us from the ship a little packet of pamphlets. The next day my lord was

under engagement to go with the Governor upon some party of pleasure; the time was nearly due, and I left

him for a moment alone in his room and skimming through the pamphlets. When I returned, his head had

"My lord, my lord!" I cried as I ran forward, for I supposed he was in some fit.

He sprang up like a figure upon wires, his countenance deformed with fury, so that in a strange place I should

scarce have known him. His hand at the same time flew above his head, as though to strike me down. "Leave

me alone!" he screeched, and I fled, as fast as my shaking legs would bear me, for my lady. She, too, lost no

time; but when we returned, he had the door locked within, and only cried to us from the other side to leave

him be. We looked in each other's faces, very white each supposing the blow had come at last.

"I will write to the Governor to excuse him," says she. "We must keep our strong friends." But when she took

She looked over me as I wrote. "That will do," she said, when I had done. "Thank God, Mackellar, I have you

In my own mind, I believed there was no explanation possible, and none required; it was my fear that the

man's madness had now simply burst forth its way, like the longsmothered flames of a volcano; but to this

"It is more to the purpose to consider our own behaviour," said I. "Must we leave him there alone?"

"I do not dare disturb him," she replied. "Nature may know best; it may be Nature that cries to be alone; and

"I will, then, despatch this letter, my lady, and return here, if you please, to sit with you," said I.

All afternoon we sat together, mostly in silence, watching my lord's door. My own mind was busy with the

scene that had just passed, and its singular resemblance to my vision. I must say a word upon this, for the

story has gone abroad with great exaggeration, and I have even seen it printed, and my own name referred to

for particulars. So much was the same: here was my lord in a room, with his head upon the table, and when

he raised his face, it wore such an expression as distressed me to the soul. But the room was different, my

lord's attitude at the table not at all the same, and his face, when he disclosed it, expressed a painful degree of

fury instead of that haunting despair which had always (except once, already referred to) characterised it in

the vision. There is the whole truth at last before the public; and if the differences be great, the coincidence

was yet enough to fill me with uneasiness. All afternoon, as I say, I sat and pondered upon this quite to

myself; for my lady had trouble of her own, and it was my last thought to vex her with fancies. About the

midst of our time of waiting, she conceived an ingenious scheme, had Mr. Alexander fetched, and bid him

knock at his father's door. My lord sent the boy about his business, but without the least violence, whether of

At last, as the night fell and I was lighting a lamp that stood there trimmed, the door opened and my lord

stood within upon the threshold. The light was not so strong that we could read his countenance; when he

"Mackellar," said he, "carry this note to its destination with your own hand. It is highly private. Find the

"No, no," says be, querulously, "I am occupied. Not at all; I am only occupied. It is a singular thing a man

must be supposed to be ill when he has any business! Send me supper to this room, and a basket of wine: I

The note was addressed to one Captain Harris, at a tavern on the portside. I knew Harris (by reputation) for a

dangerous adventurer, highly suspected of piracy in the past, and now following the rude business of an

Indian trader. What my lord should have to say to him, or he to my lord, it passed my imagination to

conceive: or yet how my lord had heard of him, unless by a disgraceful trial from which the man was recently

escaped. Altogether I went upon the errand with reluctance, and from the little I saw of the captain, returned

from it with sorrow. I found him in a foulsmelling chamber, sitting by a guttering candle and an empty

bottle; he had the remains of a military carriage, or rather perhaps it was an affectation, for his manners were

"Tell my lord, with my service, that I will wait upon his lordship in the inside of half an hour," says he, when

he had read the note; and then had the servility, pointing to his empty bottle, to propose that I should buy him

Although I returned with my best speed, the Captain followed close upon my heels, and he stayed late into

the night. The cock was crowing a second time when I saw (from my chamber window) my lord lighting him

to the gate, both men very much affected with their potations, and sometimes leaning one upon the other to

confabulate. Yet the next morning my lord was abroad again early with a hundred pounds of money in his

pocket. I never supposed that he returned with it; and yet I was quite sure it did not find its way to the Master,

for I lingered all morning within view of the booth. That was the last time my Lord Durrisdeer passed his

own enclosure till we left New York; he walked in his barn, or sat and talked with his family, all much as

usual; but the town saw nothing of him, and his daily visits to the Master seemed forgotten. Nor yet did

I was now much oppressed with a sense of the mysteries in which we had begun to move. It was plain, if only

from his change of habitude, my lord had something on his mind of a grave nature; but what it was, whence it

sprang, or why he should now keep the house and garden, I could make no guess at. It was clear, even to

probation, the pamphlets had some share in this revolution; I read all I could find, and they were all extremely

insignificant, and of the usual kind of party scurrility; even to a high politician, I could spy out no particular

matter of offence, and my lord was a man rather indifferent on public questions. The truth is, the pamphlet

which was the spring of this affair, lay all the time on my lord's bosom. There it was that I found it at last,

after he was dead, in the midst of the north wilderness: in such a place, in such dismal circumstances, I was to

read for the first time these idle, lying words of a Whig pamphleteer declaiming against indulgency to

Jacobites: "Another notorious Rebel, the Mr of Be, is to have his Title restored," the passage ran. "This

Business has been long in hand, since he rendered some very disgraceful Services in Scotland and France.

His Brother, LD DR, is known to be no better than himself in Inclination; and the supposed Heir, who is

now to be set aside, was bred up in the most detestable Principles. In the old Phrase, it is SIX OF THE ONE

AND HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER; but the Favour of such a Reposition is too extreme to be passed

over." A man in his right wits could not have cared two straws for a tale so manifestly false; that Government

should ever entertain the notion, was inconceivable to any reasoning creature, unless possibly the fool that

penned it; and my lord, though never brilliant, was ever remarkable for sense. That he should credit such a

rodomontade, and carry the pamphlet on his bosom and the words in his heart, is the clear proof of the man's

lunacy. Doubtless the mere mention of Mr. Alexander, and the threat directly held out against the child's

succession, precipitated that which had so long impended. Or else my master had been truly mad for a long

time, and we were too dull or too much used to him, and did not perceive the extent of his infirmity.

About a week after the day of the pamphlets I was late upon the harbourside, and took a turn towards the

Master's, as I often did. The door opened, a flood of light came forth upon the road, and I beheld a man taking

his departure with friendly salutations. I cannot say how singularly I was shaken to recognise the adventurer

Harris. I could not but conclude it was the hand of my lord that had brought him there; and prolonged my

walk in very serious and apprehensive thought. It was late when I came home, and there was my lord making

"Why do you come so late?" he cried. "We leave tomorrow for Albany, you and I together; and it is high

And my lady, who appeared to have been weeping, gave me the signal to obey without more parley. She told

me a little later (when we found occasion to exchange some words) that he had suddenly announced his

intention after a visit from Captain Harris, and her best endeavours, whether to dissuade him from the

journey, or to elicit some explanation of its purpose, had alike proved unavailing.

We made a prosperous voyage up that fine river of the Hudson, the weather grateful, the hills singularly

beautified with the colours of the autumn. At Albany we had our residence at an inn, where I was not so blind

and my lord not so cunning but what I could see he had some design to hold me prisoner. The work he found

for me to do was not so pressing that we should transact it apart from necessary papers in the chamber of an

inn; nor was it of such importance that I should be set upon as many as four or five scrolls of the same

document. I submitted in appearance; but I took private measures on my own side, and had the news of the

town communicated to me daily by the politeness of our host. In this way I received at last a piece of

intelligence for which, I may say, I had been waiting. Captain Harris (I was told) with "Mr. Mountain, the

trader," had gone by up the river in a boat. I would have feared the landlord's eye, so strong the sense of some

complicity upon my master's part oppressed me. But I made out to say I had some knowledge of the Captain,

although none of Mr. Mountain, and to inquire who else was of the party. My informant knew not; Mr.

Mountain had come ashore upon some needful purchases; had gone round the town buying, drinking, and

prating; and it seemed the party went upon some likely venture, for he had spoken much of great things he

would do when he returned. No more was known, for none of the rest had come ashore, and it seemed they

And sure enough, the next day, there fell a sprinkle even in Albany; but it passed as it came, and was but a

reminder of what lay before us. I thought of it lightly then, knowing so little as I did of that inclement

province: the retrospect is different; and I wonder at times if some of the horror of there events which I must

now rehearse flowed not from the foul skies and savage winds to which we were exposed, and the agony of

The boat having passed by, I thought at first we should have left the town. But no such matter. My lord

continued his stay in Albany where he had no ostensible affairs, and kept me by him, far from my due

employment, and making a pretence of occupation. It is upon this passage I expect, and perhaps deserve,

censure. I was not so dull but what I had my own thoughts. I could not see the Master entrust himself into the

hands of Harris, and not suspect some underhand contrivance. Harris bore a villainous reputation, and he had

been tampered with in private by my lord; Mountain, the trader, proved, upon inquiry, to be another of the

same kidney; the errand they were all gone upon being the recovery of illgotten treasures, offered in itself a

very strong incentive to foul play; and the character of the country where they journeyed promised impunity

to deeds of blood. Well: it is true I had all these thoughts and fears, and guesses of the Master's fate. But you

are to consider I was the same man that sought to dash him from the bulwarks of a ship in the midsea; the

same that, a little before, very impiously but sincerely offered God a bargain, seeking to hire God to be my

bravo. It is true again that I had a good deal melted towards our enemy. But this I always thought of as a

weakness of the flesh and even culpable; my mind remaining steady and quite bent against him. True, yet

again, that it was one thing to assume on my own shoulders the guilt and danger of a criminal attempt, and

another to stand by and see my lord imperil and besmirch himself. But this was the very ground of my

inaction. For (should I anyway stir in the business) I might fail indeed to save the Master, but I could not miss

Thus it was that I did nothing; and upon the same reasons, I am still strong to justify my course. We lived

meanwhile in Albany, but though alone together in a strange place, had little traffic beyond formal

salutations. My lord had carried with him several introductions to chief people of the town and

neighbourhood; others he had before encountered in New York: with this consequence, that he went much

abroad, and I am sorry to say was altogether too convivial in his habits. I was often in bed, but never asleep,

when he returned; and there was scarce a night when he did not betray the influence of liquor. By day he

would still lay upon me endless tasks, which he showed considerable ingenuity to fish up and renew, in the

manner of Penelope's web. I never refused, as I say, for I was hired to do his bidding; but I took no pains to

"I think I must be the devil and you Michael Scott," I said to him one day. "I have bridged Tweed and split

He looked at me with shining eyes, and looked away again, his jaw chewing, but without words.

"Well, well, my lord," said I, "your will is my pleasure. I will do this thing for the fourth time; but I would

beg of you to invent another task against tomorrow, for by my troth, I am weary of this one."

"You do not know what you are saying," returned my lord, putting on his hat and turning his back to me. "It

is a strange thing you should take a pleasure to annoy me. A friend but that is a different affair. It is a

strange thing. I am a man that has had illfortune all my life through. I am still surrounded by contrivances. I

am always treading in plots," he burst out. "The whole world is banded against me."

"I would not talk wicked nonsense if I were you," said I; "but I will tell you what I WOULD do I would put

"Do ye think that?" said he, with a manner of interest highly awakened. "Would that be good for me? It's a

"I mind the days when you had no call to try, and I wish, my lord, that they were back again," said I. "But the

"I don't appear to carry drink the way I used to," said my lord. "I get overtaken, Mackellar. But I will be more

"That is what I would ask of you," I replied. "You are to bear in mind that you are Mr. Alexander's father:

"Ay, ay," said he. "Ye're a very sensible man, Mackellar, and have been long in my employ. But I think, if

you have nothing more to say to me I will be stepping. If you have nothing more to say?" he added, with that

"Then I think I will be stepping," says my lord, and stood and looked at me fidgeting with his hat, which he

had taken off again. "I suppose you will have no errands? No? I am to meet Sir William Johnson, but I will be

more upon my guard." He was silent for a time, and then, smiling: "Do you call to mind a place, Mackellar

it's a little below Engles where the burn runs very deep under a wood of rowans. I mind being there when I

was a lad dear, it comes over me like an old song! I was after the fishing, and I made a bonny cast. Eh,

"My lord," said I, "if you would drink with more moderation you would have the better chance. It is an old

"Goodmorning, goodmorning," said he, and so got himself at last from the apartment.

I give that for a fair specimen of my lord in the morning; and I must have described my patron very ill if the

reader does not perceive a notable falling off. To behold the man thus fallen: to know him accepted among

his companions for a poor, muddled toper, welcome (if he were welcome at all) for the bare consideration of

his title; and to recall the virtues he had once displayed against such odds of fortune; was not this a thing at

In his cups, he was more expensive. I will give but the one scene, close upon the end, which is strongly

marked upon my memory to this day, and at the time affected me almost with horror

I was in bed, lying there awake, when I heard him stumbling on the stair and singing. My lord had no gift of

music, his brother had all the graces of the family, so that when I say singing, you are to understand a manner

of high, carolling utterance, which was truly neither speech nor song. Something not unlike is to be heard

upon the lips of children, ere they learn shame; from those of a man grown elderly, it had a strange effect. He

opened the door with noisy precaution; peered in, shading his candle; conceived me to slumber; entered, set

his light upon the table, and took off his hat. I saw him very plain; a high, feverish exultation appeared to boil

in his veins, and he stood and smiled and smirked upon the candle. Presently he lifted up his arm, snapped his

fingers, and fell to undress. As he did so, having once more forgot my presence, he took back to his singing;

and now I could hear the words, which were those from the old song of the TWA CORBIES endlessly

I have said there was no music in the man. His strains had no logical succession except in so far as they

inclined a little to the minor mode; but they exercised a rude potency upon the feelings, and followed the

words, and signified the feelings of the singer with barbaric fitness. He took it first in the time and manner of

a rant; presently this illfavoured gleefulness abated, he began to dwell upon the notes more feelingly, and

sank at last into a degree of maudlin pathos that was to me scarce bearable. By equal steps, the original

briskness of his acts declined; and when he was stripped to his breeches, he sat on the bedside and fell to

whimpering. I know nothing less respectable than the tears of drunkenness, and turned my back impatiently

But he had started himself (I am to suppose) on that slippery descent of selfpity; on the which, to a man

unstrung by old sorrows and recent potations there is no arrest except exhaustion. His tears continued to flow,

and the man to sit there, three parts naked, in the cold air of the chamber. I twitted myself alternately with

inhumanity and sentimental weakness, now half rising in my bed to interfere, now reading myself lessons of

indifference and courting slumber, until, upon a sudden, the QUANTUM MUTATUS AB ILLO shot into my

mind; and calling to remembrance his old wisdom, constancy, and patience, I was overborne with a pity

almost approaching the passionate, not for my master alone but for the sons of man.

At this I leaped from my place, went over to his side and laid a hand on his bare shoulder, which was cold as

stone. He uncovered his face and showed it me all swollen and begrutten (10) like a child's; and at the sight

"Think shame to yourself," said I. "This is bairnly conduct. I might have been snivelling myself, if I had

cared to swill my belly with wine. But I went to my bed sober like a man. Come: get into yours, and have

"Wae?" cried I. "For a good cause, I think. What words were these you sang as you came in? Show pity to

others, we then can talk of pity to yourself. You can be the one thing or the other, but I will be no party to

"Cry!" cries he, with a burst, "that's it strike! that's talking! Man, I've stood it all too long. But when they

laid a hand upon the child, when the child's threatened" his momentary vigour whimpering off "my child,

I took him by the shoulders and shook him. "Alexander!" said I. "Do you even think of him? Not you! Look

yourself in the face like a brave man, and you'll find you're but a selfdeceiver. The wife, the friend, the

"Mackellar," said he, with a wonderful return to his old manner and appearance, "you may say what you will

"I will open your eyes in your despite," said I. "How long have we been here? and how often have you

written to your family? I think this is the first time you were ever separate: have you written at all? Do they

I had caught him here too openly; it braced his better nature; there was no more weeping, he thanked me very

penitently, got to bed and was soon fast asleep; and the first thing he did the next morning was to sit down

and begin a letter to my lady: a very tender letter it was too, though it was never finished. Indeed all

communication with New York was transacted by myself; and it will be judged I had a thankless task of it.

What to tell my lady and in what words, and how far to be false and how far cruel, was a thing that kept me

All this while, no doubt, my lord waited with growing impatiency for news of his accomplices. Harris, it is to

be thought, had promised a high degree of expedition; the time was already overpast when word was to be

looked for; and suspense was a very evil counsellor to a man of an impaired intelligence. My lord's mind

throughout this interval dwelled almost wholly in the Wilderness, following that party with whose deeds he

had so much concern. He continually conjured up their camps and progresses, the fashion of the country, the

perpetration in a thousand different manners of the same horrid fact, and that consequent spectacle of the

Master's bones lying scattered in the wind. These private, guilty considerations I would continually observe

to peep forth in the man's talk, like rabbits from a hill. And it is the less wonder if the scene of his meditations

It is well known what pretext he took. Sir William Johnson had a diplomatic errand in these parts; and my

lord and I (from curiosity, as was given out) went in his company. Sir William was well attended and

liberally supplied. Hunters brought us venison, fish was taken for us daily in the streams, and brandy ran like

water. We proceeded by day and encamped by night in the military style; sentinels were set and changed;

every man had his named duty; and Sir William was the spring of all. There was much in this that might at

times have entertained me; but for our misfortune, the weather was extremely harsh, the days were in the

beginning open, but the nights frosty from the first. A painful keen wind blew most of the time, so that we sat

in the boat with blue fingers, and at night, as we scorched our faces at the fire, the clothes upon our back

appeared to be of paper. A dreadful solitude surrounded our steps; the land was quite dispeopled, there was

no smoke of fires, and save for a single boat of merchants on the second day, we met no travellers. The

season was indeed late, but this desertion of the waterways impressed Sir William himself; and I have heard

him more than once express a sense of intimidation. "I have come too late, I fear; they must have dug up the

I could never depict the blackness of my soul upon this journey. I have none of those minds that are in love

with the unusual: to see the winter coming and to lie in the field so far from any house, oppressed me like a

nightmare; it seemed, indeed, a kind of awful braving of God's power; and this thought, which I daresay only

writes me down a coward, was greatly exaggerated by my private knowledge of the errand we were come

upon. I was besides encumbered by my duties to Sir William, whom it fell upon me to entertain; for my lord

was quite sunk into a state bordering on PERVIGILIUM, watching the woods with a rapt eye, sleeping scarce

at all, and speaking sometimes not twenty words in a whole day. That which he said was still coherent; but it

turned almost invariably upon the party for whom he kept his crazy lookout. He would tell Sir William often,

and always as if it were a new communication, that he had "a brother somewhere in the woods," and beg that

the sentinels should be directed "to inquire for him." "I am anxious for news of my brother," he would say.

And sometimes, when we were under way, he would fancy he spied a canoe far off upon the water or a camp

on the shore, and exhibit painful agitation. It was impossible but Sir William should be struck with these

singularities; and at last he led me aside, and hinted his uneasiness. I touched my head and shook it; quite

"Well, well," replied Sir William, "it is none of my affairs. But if I had understood, you would never have

Our advance into this savage country had thus uneventfully proceeded for about a week, when we encamped

for a night at a place where the river ran among considerable mountains clothed in wood. The fires were

lighted on a level space at the water's edge; and we supped and lay down to sleep in the customary fashion. It

chanced the night fell murderously cold; the stringency of the frost seized and bit me through my coverings

so that pain kept me wakeful; and I was afoot again before the peep of day, crouching by the fires or trotting

to and for at the stream's edge, to combat the aching of my limbs. At last dawn began to break upon hoar

woods and mountains, the sleepers rolled in their robes, and the boisterous river dashing among spears of ice.

I stood looking about me, swaddled in my stiff coat of a bull's fur, and the breath smoking from my scorched

nostrils, when, upon a sudden, a singular, eager cry rang from the borders of the wood. The sentries answered

it, the sleepers sprang to their feet; one pointed, the rest followed his direction with their eyes, and there, upon

the edge of the forest and betwixt two trees, we beheld the figure of a man reaching forth his hands like one

in ecstasy. The next moment he ran forward, fell on his knees at the side of the camp, and burst in tears.

This was John Mountain, the trader, escaped from the most horrid perils; and his fist word, when he got

"Nothing?" says Mountain. "Then I was right after all." With that he struck his palm upon his brow. "But

what takes him back?" he cried. "What takes the man back among dead bodies. There is some damned

This was a word which highly aroused our curiosity, but I shall be more perspicacious, if I narrate these

incidents in their true order. Here follows a narrative which I have compiled out of three sources, not very

FIRST, a written statement by Mountain, in which everything criminal is cleverly smuggled out of view;

THIRD, many conversations with Mountain himself, in which he was pleased to be entirely plain; for the

The crew that went up the river under the joint command of Captain Harris and the Master numbered in all

nine persons, of whom (if I except Secundra Dass) there was not one that had not merited the gallows. From

Harris downward the voyagers were notorious in that colony for desperate, bloodyminded miscreants; some

were reputed pirates, the most hawkers of rum; all ranters and drinkers; all fit associates, embarking together

without remorse, upon this treacherous and murderous design. I could not hear there was much discipline or

any set captain in the gang; but Harris and four others, Mountain himself, two Scotchmen Pinkerton and

Hastie and a man of the name of Hicks, a drunken shoemaker, put their heads together and agreed upon the

course. In a material sense, they were well enough provided; and the Master in particular brought with him a

Even this small indulgence told against him in the minds of his companions. But indeed he was in a position

so entirely false (and even ridiculous) that all his habit of command and arts of pleasing were here thrown

away. In the eyes of all, except Secundra Dass, he figured as a common gull and designated victim; going

unconsciously to death; yet he could not but suppose himself the contriver and the leader of the expedition;

he could scarce help but so conduct himself and at the least hint of authority or condescension, his deceivers

would be laughing in their sleeves. I was so used to see and to conceive him in a high, authoritative attitude,

that when I had conceived his position on this journey, I was pained and could have blushed. How soon he

may have entertained a first surmise, we cannot know; but it was long, and the party had advanced into the

Wilderness beyond the reach of any help, ere he was fully awakened to the truth.

It fell thus. Harris and some others had drawn apart into the woods for consultation, when they were startled

by a rustling in the brush. They were all accustomed to the arts of Indian warfare, and Mountain had not only

lived and hunted, but fought and earned some reputation, with the savages. He could move in the woods

without noise, and follow a trail like a hound; and upon the emergence of this alert, he was deputed by the

rest to plunge into the thicket for intelligence. He was soon convinced there was a man in his close

neighbourhood, moving with precaution but without art among the leaves and branches; and coming shortly

to a place of advantage, he was able to observe Secundra Dass crawling briskly off with many backward

glances. At this he knew not whether to laugh or cry; and his accomplices, when he had returned and

reported, were in much the same dubiety. There was now no danger of an Indian onslaught; but on the other

hand, since Secundra Dass was at the pains to spy upon them, it was highly probable he knew English, and if

he knew English it was certain the whole of their design was in the Master's knowledge. There was one

singularity in the position. If Secundra Dass knew and concealed his knowledge of English, Harris was a

proficient in several of the tongues of India, and as his career in that part of the world had been a great deal

worse than profligate, he had not thought proper to remark upon the circumstance. Each side had thus a

spyhole on the counsels of the other. The plotters, so soon as this advantage was explained, returned to

camp; Harris, hearing the Hindustani was once more closeted with his master, crept to the side of the tent;

and the rest, sitting about the fire with their tobacco, awaited his report with impatience. When he came at

last, his face was very black. He had overheard enough to confirm the worst of his suspicions. Secundra Dass

was a good English scholar; he had been some days creeping and listening, the Master was now fully

informed of the conspiracy, and the pair proposed on the morrow to fall out of line at a carrying place and

plunge at a venture in the woods: preferring the full risk of famine, savage beasts, and savage men to their

What, then, was to be done? Some were for killing the Master on the spot; but Harris assured them that would

be a crime without profit, since the secret of the treasure must die along with him that buried it. Others were

for desisting at once from the whole enterprise and making for New York; but the appetising name of

treasure, and the thought of the long way they had already travelled dissuaded the majority. I imagine they

were dull fellows for the most part. Harris, indeed, had some acquirements, Mountain was no fool, Hastie

was an educated man; but even these had manifestly failed in life, and the rest were the dregs of colonial

rascality. The conclusion they reached, at least, was more the offspring of greed and hope, than reason. It was

to temporise, to be wary and watch the Master, to be silent and supply no further aliment to his suspicions,

and to depend entirely (as well as I make out) on the chance that their victim was as greedy, hopeful, and

Twice in the course of the next day Secundra and the Master must have appeared to themselves to have

escaped; and twice they were circumvented. The Master, save that the second time he grew a little pale,

displayed no sign of disappointment, apologised for the stupidity with which he had fallen aside, thanked his

recapturers as for a service, and rejoined the caravan with all his usual gallantry and cheerfulness of mien and

bearing. But it is certain he had smelled a rat; for from thenceforth he and Secundra spoke only in each

other's ear, and Harris listened and shivered by the tent in vain. The same night it was announced they were to

leave the boats and proceed by foot, a circumstance which (as it put an end to the confusion of the portages)

And now there began between the two sides a silent contest, for life on the one hand, for riches on the other.

They were now near that quarter of the desert in which the Master himself must begin to play the part of

guide; and using this for a pretext of persecution, Harris and his men sat with him every night about the fire,

and laboured to entrap him into some admission. If he let slip his secret, he knew well it was the warrant for

his death; on the other hand, he durst not refuse their questions, and must appear to help them to the best of

his capacity, or he practically published his mistrust. And yet Mountain assures me the man's brow was never

ruffled. He sat in the midst of these jackals, his life depending by a thread, like some easy, witty householder

at home by his own fire; an answer he had for everything as often as not, a jesting answer; avoided threats,

evaded insults; talked, laughed, and listened with an open countenance; and, in short, conducted himself in

such a manner as must have disarmed suspicion, and went near to stagger knowledge. Indeed, Mountain

confessed to me they would soon have disbelieved the Captain's story, and supposed their designated victim

still quite innocent of their designs; but for the fact that he continued (however ingeniously) to give the slip to

questions, and the yet stronger confirmation of his repeated efforts to escape. The last of these, which brought

things to a head, I am now to relate. And first I should say that by this time the temper of Harris's companions

was utterly worn out; civility was scarce pretended; and for one very significant circumstance, the Master and

Secundra had been (on some pretext) deprived of weapons. On their side, however, the threatened pair kept

up the parade of friendship handsomely; Secundra was all bows, the Master all smiles; and on the last night

of the truce he had even gone so far as to sing for the diversion of the company. It was observed that he had

At least, about three in the morning, he came out of the tent into the open air, audibly mourning and

complaining, with all the manner of a sufferer from surfeit. For some while, Secundra publicly attended on

his patron, who at last became more easy, and fell asleep on the frosty ground behind the tent, the Indian

returning within. Some time after, the sentry was changed; had the Master pointed out to him, where he lay in

what is called a robe of buffalo: and thenceforth kept an eye upon him (he declared) without remission. With

the first of the dawn, a draught of wind came suddenly and blew open one side the corner of the robe; and

with the same puff, the Master's hat whirled in the air and fell some yards away. The sentry thinking it

remarkable the sleeper should not awaken, thereupon drew near; and the next moment, with a great shout,

informed the camp their prisoner was escaped. He had left behind his Indian, who (in the first vivacity of the

surprise) came near to pay the forfeit of his life, and was, in fact, inhumanly mishandled; but Secundra, in the

midst of threats and cruelties, stuck to it with extraordinary loyalty, that he was quite ignorant of his master's

plans, which might indeed be true, and of the manner of his escape, which was demonstrably false. Nothing

was therefore left to the conspirators but to rely entirely on the skill of Mountain. The night had been frosty,

the ground quite hard; and the sun was no sooner up than a strong thaw set in. It was Mountain's boast that

few men could have followed that trail, and still fewer (even of the native Indians) found it. The Master had

thus a long start before his pursuers had the scent, and he must have travelled with surprising energy for a

pedestrian so unused, since it was near noon before Mountain had a view of him. At this conjuncture the

trader was alone, all his companions following, at his own request, several hundred yards in the rear; he knew

the Master was unarmed; his heart was besides heated with the exercise and lust of hunting; and seeing the

quarry so close, so defenceless, and seeming so fatigued, he vaingloriously determined to effect the capture

with his single hand. A step or two farther brought him to one margin of a little clearing; on the other, with

his arms folded and his back to a huge stone, the Master sat. It is possible Mountain may have made a rustle,

it is certain, at least, the Master raised his head and gazed directly at that quarter of the thicket where his

hunter lay; "I could not be sure he saw me," Mountain said; "he just looked my way like a man with his mind

made up, and all the courage ran out of me like rum out of a bottle." And presently, when the Master looked

away again, and appeared to resume those meditations in which he had sat immersed before the trader's

coming, Mountain slunk stealthily back and returned to seek the help of his companions.

And now began the chapter of surprises, for the scout had scarce informed the others of his discovery, and

they were yet preparing their weapons for a rush upon the fugitive, when the man himself appeared in their

"Ah, men!" says he, on his beholding them. "Here is a fortunate encounter. Let us get back to camp."

Mountain had not mentioned his own weakness or the Master's disconcerting gaze upon the thicket, so that

(with all the rest) his return appeared spontaneous. For all that, a hubbub arose; oaths flew, fists were shaken,

"Let us get back to camp," said the Master. "I have an explanation to make, but it must be laid before you all.

And in the meanwhile I would put up these weapons, one of which might very easily go off and blow away

your hopes of treasure. I would not kill," says he, smiling, "the goose with the golden eggs."

The charm of his superiority once more triumphed; and the party, in no particular order, set off on their

"You are a clever fellow and a bold," says he, "but I am not so sure that you are doing yourself justice. I

would have you to consider whether you would not do better, ay, and safer, to serve me instead of serving so

commonplace a rascal as Mr. Harris. Consider of it," he concluded, dealing the man a gentle tap upon the

shoulder, "and don't be in haste. Dead or alive, you will find me an ill man to quarrel with."

When they were come back to the camp, where Harris and Pinkerton stood guard over Secundra, these two

ran upon the Master like viragoes, and were amazed out of measure when they were bidden by their comrades

to "stand back and hear what the gentleman had to say." The Master had not flinched before their onslaught;

nor, at this proof of the ground he had gained, did he betray the least sufficiency.

With that they made a hasty meal: and as soon as it was done, the Master, leaning on one elbow, began his

speech. He spoke long, addressing himself to each except Harris, finding for each (with the same exception)

some particular flattery. He called them "bold, honest blades," declared he had never seen a more jovial

company, work better done, or pains more merrily supported. "Well, then," says he, "some one asks me, Why

the devil I ran away? But that is scarce worth answer, for I think you all know pretty well. But you know only

pretty well: that is a point I shall arrive at presently, and be you ready to remark it when it comes. There is a

traitor here: a double traitor: I will give you his name before I am done; and let that suffice for now. But here

comes some other gentleman and asks me, 'Why, in the devil, I came back?' Well, before I answer that

question, I have one to put to you. It was this cur here, this Harris, that speaks Hindustani?" cries he, rising on

one knee and pointing fair at the man's face, with a gesture indescribably menacing; and when he had been

answered in the affirmative, "Ah!" says he, "then are all my suspicions verified, and I did rightly to come

back. Now, men, hear the truth for the first time." Thereupon he launched forth in a long story, told with

extraordinary skill, how he had all along suspected Harris, how he had found the confirmation of his fears,

and how Harris must have misrepresented what passed between Secundra and himself. At this point he made

a bold stroke with excellent effect. "I suppose," says he, "you think you are going shares with Harris; I

suppose you think you will see to that yourselves; you would naturally not think so flat a rogue could cozen

you. But have a care! These half idiots have a sort of cunning, as the skunk has its stench; and it may be news

to you that Harris has taken care of himself already. Yes, for him the treasure is all money in the bargain. You

must find it or go starve. But he has been paid beforehand; my brother paid him to destroy me; look at him, if

you doubt look at him, grinning and gulping, a detected thief!" Thence, having made this happy impression,

he explained how he had escaped, and thought better of it, and at last concluded to come back, lay the truth

before the company, and take his chance with them once more: persuaded as he was, they would instantly

depose Harris and elect some other leader. "There is the whole truth," said he: "and with one exception, I put

myself entirely in your hands. What is the exception? There he sits," he cried, pointing once more to Harris;

"a man that has to die! Weapons and conditions are all one to me; put me face to face with him, and if you

give me nothing but a stick, in five minutes I will show you a sop of broken carrion, fit for dogs to roll in."

It was dark night when he made an end; they had listened in almost perfect silence; but the firelight scarce

permitted any one to judge, from the look of his neighbours, with what result of persuasion or conviction.

Indeed, the Master had set himself in the brightest place, and kept his face there, to be the centre of men's

eyes: doubtless on a profound calculation. Silence followed for awhile, and presently the whole party became

involved in disputation: the Master lying on his back, with his hands knit under his head and one knee flung

across the other, like a person unconcerned in the result. And here, I daresay, his bravado carried him too far

and prejudiced his case. At least, after a cast or two back and forward, opinion settled finally against him. It's

possible he hoped to repeat the business of the pirate ship, and be himself, perhaps, on hard enough

conditions, elected leader; and things went so far that way, that Mountain actually threw out the proposition.

But the rock he split upon was Hastie. This fellow was not well liked, being sour and slow, with an ugly,

glowering disposition, but he had studied some time for the church at Edinburgh College, before ill conduct

had destroyed his prospects, and he now remembered and applied what he had learned. Indeed he had not

proceeded very far, when the Master rolled carelessly upon one side, which was done (in Mountain's opinion)

to conceal the beginnings of despair upon his countenance. Hastie dismissed the most of what they had heard

as nothing to the matter: what they wanted was the treasure. All that was said of Harris might be true, and

they would have to see to that in time. But what had that to do with the treasure? They had heard a vast of

words; but the truth was just this, that Mr. Durie was damnably frightened and had several times run off. Here

he was whether caught or come back was all one to Hastie: the point was to make an end of the business.

As for the talk of deposing and electing captains, he hoped they were all free men and could attend their own

affairs. That was dust flung in their eyes, and so was the proposal to fight Harris. "He shall fight no one in

this camp, I can tell him that," said Hastie. "We had trouble enough to get his arms away from him, and we

should look pretty fools to give them back again. But if it's excitement the gentleman is after, I can supply

him with more than perhaps he cares about. For I have no intention to spend the remainder of my life in these

mountains; already I have been too long; and I propose that he should immediately tell us where that treasure

is, or else immediately be shot. And there," says he, producing his weapon, "there is the pistol that I mean to

"Come, I call you a man," cries the Master, sitting up and looking at the speaker with an air of admiration.

"That's an idle question," said the Master. "Needs must when the devil drives. The truth is we are within easy

With that, as if all were quite settled, and settled exactly to his mind, he walked off to his tent, whither

I cannot think of these last turns and wriggles of my old enemy except with admiration; scarce even pity is

mingled with the sentiment, so strongly the man supported, so boldly resisted his misfortunes. Even at that

hour, when he perceived himself quite lost, when he saw he had but effected an exchange of enemies, and

overthrown Harris to set Hastie up, no sign of weakness appeared in his behaviour, and he withdrew to his

tent, already determined (I must suppose) upon affronting the incredible hazard of his last expedient, with the

same easy, assured, genteel expression and demeanour as he might have left a theatre withal to join a supper

Early in the night, word went about the camp that he was sick; and the first thing the next morning he called

Hastie to his side, and inquired most anxiously if he had any skill in medicine. As a matter of fact, this was a

vanity of that fallen divinity student's, to which he had cunningly addressed himself. Hastie examined him;

and being flattered, ignorant, and highly auspicious, knew not in the least whether the man was sick or

malingering. In this state he went forth again to his companions; and (as the thing which would give himself

most consequence either way) announced that the patient was in a fair way to die.

"For all that," he added with an oath, "and if he bursts by the wayside, he must bring us this morning to the

But there were several in the camp (Mountain among the number) whom this brutality revolted. They would

have seen the Master pistolled, or pistolled him themselves, without the smallest sentiment of pity; but they

seemed to have been touched by his gallant fight and unequivocal defeat the night before; perhaps, too, they

were even already beginning to oppose themselves to their new leader: at least, they now declared that (if the

The next morning he was manifestly worse, and Hastie himself began to display something of humane

concern, so easily does even the pretence of doctoring awaken sympathy. The third the Master called

Mountain and Hastie to the tent, announced himself to be dying, gave them full particulars as to the position

of the cache, and begged them to set out incontinently on the quest, so that they might see if he deceived

them, and (if they were at first unsuccessful) he should be able to correct their error.

But here arose a difficulty on which he doubtless counted. None of these men would trust another, none

would consent to stay behind. On the other hand, although the Master seemed extremely low, spoke scarce

above a whisper, and lay much of the time insensible, it was still possible it was a fraudulent sickness; and if

all went treasurehunting, it might prove they had gone upon a wildgoose chase, and return to find their

prisoner flown. They concluded, therefore, to hang idling round the camp, alleging sympathy to their reason;

and certainly, so mingled are our dispositions, several were sincerely (if not very deeply) affected by the

natural peril of the man whom they callously designed to murder. In the afternoon, Hastie was called to the

bedside to pray: the which (incredible as it must appear) he did with unction; about eight at night, the wailing

of Secundra announced that all was over; and before ten, the Indian, with a link stuck in the ground, was

toiling at the grave. Sunrise of next day beheld the Master's burial, all hands attending with great decency of

demeanour; and the body was laid in the earth, wrapped in a fur robe, with only the face uncovered; which

last was of a waxy whiteness, and had the nostrils plugged according to some Oriental habit of Secundra's.

No sooner was the grave filled than the lamentations of the Indian once more struck concern to every heart;

and it appears this gang of murderers, so far from resenting his outcries, although both distressful and (in

such a country) perilous to their own safety, roughly but kindly endeavoured to console him.

But if human nature is even in the worst of men occasionally kind, it is still, and before all things, greedy; and

they soon turned from the mourner to their own concerns. The cache of the treasure being hard by, although

yet unidentified, it was concluded not to break camp; and the day passed, on the part of the voyagers, in

unavailing exploration of the woods, Secundra the while lying on his master's grave. That night they placed

no sentinel, but lay altogether about the fire, in the customary woodman fashion, the heads outward, like the

spokes of a wheel. Morning found them in the same disposition; only Pinkerton, who lay on Mountain's right,

between him and Hastie, had (in the hours of darkness) been secretly butchered, and there lay, still wrapped

as to his body in his mantle, but offering above that ungodly and horrific spectacle of the scalped head. The

gang were that morning as pale as a company of phantoms, for the pertinacity of Indian war (or to speak more

correctly, Indian murder) was well known to all. But they laid the chief blame on their unsentinelled posture;

and fired with the neighbourhood of the treasure, determined to continue where they were. Pinkerton was

buried hard by the Master; the survivors again passed the day in exploration, and returned in a mingled

humour of anxiety and hope, being partly certain they were now close on the discovery of what they sought,

and on the other hand (with the return of darkness) were infected with the fear of Indians. Mountain was the

first sentry; he declares he neither slept nor yet sat down, but kept his watch with a perpetual and straining

vigilance, and it was even with unconcern that (when he saw by the stars his time was up) he drew near the

fire to awaken his successor. This man (it was Hicks the shoemaker) slept on the lee side of the circle,

something farther off in consequence than those to windward, and in a place darkened by the blowing smoke.

Mountain stooped and took him by the shoulder; his hand was at once smeared by some adhesive wetness;

and (the wind at the moment veering) the firelight shone upon the sleeper, and showed him, like Pinkerton,

It was clear they had fallen in the hands of one of those matchless Indian bravos, that will sometimes follow a

party for days, and in spite of indefatigable travel, and unsleeping watch, continue to keep up with their

advance, and steal a scalp at every resting place. Upon this discovery, the treasureseekers, already reduced

to a poor half dozen, fell into mere dismay, seized a few necessaries, and deserting the remainder of their

goods, fled outright into the forest. Their fire they left still burning, and their dead comrade unburied. All day

they ceased not to flee, eating by the way, from hand to mouth; and since they feared to sleep, continued to

advance at random even in the hours of darkness. But the limit of man's endurance is soon reached; when

they rested at last it was to sleep profoundly; and when they woke, it was to find that the enemy was still

upon their heels, and death and mutilation had once more lessened and deformed their company.

By this they had become lightheaded, they had quite missed their path in the wilderness, their stores were

already running low. With the further horrors, it is superfluous that I should swell this narrative, already too

prolonged. Suffice it to say that when at length a night passed by innocuous, and they might breathe again in

the hope that the murderer had at last desisted from pursuit, Mountain and Secundra were alone. The trader is

firmly persuaded their unseen enemy was some warrior of his own acquaintance, and that he himself was

spared by favour. The mercy extended to Secundra he explains on the ground that the East Indian was

thought to be insane; partly from the fact that, through all the horrors of the flight and while others were

casting away their very food and weapons, Secundra continued to stagger forward with a mattock on his

shoulder, and partly because, in the last days and with a great degree of heat and fluency, he perpetually

spoke with himself in his own language. But he was sane enough when it came to English.

"You think he will be gone quite away?" he asked, upon their blest awakening in safety.

"I pray God so, I believe so, I dare to believe so," Mountain had replied almost with incoherence, as he

And indeed he was so much distempered that until he met us, the next morning, he could scarce be certain

whether he had dreamed, or whether it was a fact, that Secundra had thereupon turned directly about and

returned without a word upon their footprints, setting his face for these wintry and hungry solitudes, along a

Mountain's story, as it was laid before Sir William Johnson and my lord, was shorn, of course, of all the

earlier particulars, and the expedition described to have proceeded uneventfully, until the Master sickened.

But the latter part was very forcibly related, the speaker visibly thrilling to his recollections; and our then

situation, on the fringe of the same desert, and the private interests of each, gave him an audience prepared to

share in his emotions. For Mountain's intelligence not only changed the world for my Lord Durrisdeer, but

These I find I must lay more at length before the reader. Word had reached Albany of dubious import; it had

been rumoured some hostility was to be put in act; and the Indian diplomatist had, thereupon, sped into the

wilderness, even at the approach of winter, to nip that mischief in the bud. Here, on the borders, he learned

that he was come too late; and a difficult choice was thus presented to a man (upon the whole) not any more

bold than prudent. His standing with the painted braves may be compared to that of my Lord President

Culloden among the chiefs of our own Highlanders at the 'fortyfive; that is as much as to say, he was, to

these men, reason's only speaking trumpet, and counsels of peace and moderation, if they were to prevail at

all, must prevail singly through his influence. If, then, he should return, the province must lie open to all the

abominable tragedies of Indian war the houses blaze, the wayfarer be cut off, and the men of the woods

collect their usual disgusting spoil of human scalps. On the other side, to go farther forth, to risk so small a

party deeper in the desert, to carry words of peace among warlike savages already rejoicing to return to war:

"I have come too late," he said more than once, and would fall into a deep consideration, his head bowed in

At length he raised his face and looked upon us, that is to say upon my lord, Mountain, and myself, sitting

close round a small fire, which had been made for privacy in one corner of the camp.

"My lord, to be quite frank with you, I find myself in two minds," said he. "I think it very needful I should go

on, but not at all proper I should any longer enjoy the pleasure of your company. We are here still upon the

water side; and I think the risk to southward no great matter. Will not yourself and Mr. Mackellar take a

My lord, I should say, had listened to Mountain's narrative, regarding him throughout with a painful intensity

of gaze; and since the tale concluded, had sat as in a dream. There was something very daunting in his look;

something to my eyes not rightly human; the face, lean, and dark, and aged, the mouth painful, the teeth

disclosed in a perpetual rictus; the eyeball swimming clear of the lids upon a field of bloodshot white. I

could not behold him myself without a jarring irritation, such as, I believe, is too frequently the uppermost

feeling on the sickness of those dear to us. Others, I could not but remark. were scarce able to support his

neighbourhood Sir William eviting to be near him, Mountain dodging his eye, and, when he met it,

blenching and halting in his story. At this appeal, however, my lord appeared to recover his command upon

"Not short of it, at least," replied Sir William. "There is no safety nearer hand."

"I would be very sweir (11) to return," says my lord. "I am not afraid of Indians," he added, with a jerk.

"I wish that I could say so much," returned Sir William, smiling; "although, if any man durst say it, it should

be myself. But you are to keep in view my responsibility, and that as the voyage has now become highly

dangerous, and your business if you ever had any," says he, "brought quite to a conclusion by the

distressing family intelligence you have received, I should be hardly justified if I even suffered you to

proceed, and run the risk of some obloquy if anything regrettable should follow."

"I don't think I understand your honour," said the trader, pausing like a man very much affected, in the

For a moment my lord seemed at a full stop; and then, with some irritation, "I ask you what he died of. Surely

"Oh! I don't know," said Mountain. "Hastie even never knew. He seemed to sicken natural, and just pass

"Why," says my lord, "this in a matter of succession; my son's title may be called in doubt; and the man being

supposed to be dead of nobody can tell what, a great deal of suspicion would be naturally roused."

"I will never believe that," returned my lord, painfully trembling. "I'll never believe it!" he cried again, and

"Look dead?" repeated the trader. "He looked white. Why, what would he be at? I tell you, I put the sods

My lord caught Sir William by the coat with a hooked hand. "This man has the name of my brother," says he,

"He's not of this world," whispered my lord, "neither him nor the black deil that serves him. I have struck my

sword throughout his vitals," he cried; "I have felt the hilt dirl (12) on his breastbone, and the hot blood spirt

in my very face, time and again, time and again!" he repeated, with a gesture indescribable. "But he was

never dead for that," said he, and I sighed aloud. "Why should I think he was dead now? No, not till I see him

Sir William looked across at me with a long face. Mountain forgot his wounds, staring and gaping.

"My lord," said I, "I wish you would collect your spirits." But my throat was so dry, and my own wits so

"No," says my lord, "it's not to be supposed that he would understand me. Mackellar does, for he kens all, and

has seen him buried before now. This is a very good servant to me, Sir William, this man Mackellar; he

buried him with his own hands he and my father by the light of two siller candlesticks. The other man is a

familiar spirit; he brought him from Coromandel. I would have told ye this long syne, Sir William, only it

was in the family." These last remarks he made with a kind of a melancholy composure, and his time of

aberration seemed to pass away. "You can ask yourself what it all means," he proceeded. "My brother falls

sick, and dies, and is buried, as so they say; and all seems very plain. But why did the familiar go back? I

"I will be at your service, my lord, in half a minute," said Sir William, rising. "Mr. Mackellar, two words with

you;" and he led me without the camp, the frost crunching in our steps, the trees standing at our elbow, hoar

with frost, even as on that night in the Long Shrubbery. "Of course, this is midsummer madness," said Sir

"Shall I seize and bind him?" asked Sir William. "I will upon your authority. If these are all ravings, that

I looked down upon the ground, back at the camp, with its bright fires and the folk watching us, and about me

on the woods and mountains; there was just the one way that I could not look, and that was in Sir William's

"Sir William," said I at last, "I think my lord not sane, and have long thought him so. But there are degrees in

madness; and whether he should be brought under restraint Sir William, I am no fit judge," I concluded.

"I will be the judge," said he. "I ask for facts. Was there, in all that jargon, any word of truth or sanity? Do

you hesitate?" he asked. "Am I to understand you have buried this gentleman before?"

"Not buried," said I; and then, taking up courage at last, "Sir William," said I, "unless I were to tell you a long

story, which much concerns a noble family (and myself not in the least), it would be impossible to make this

matter clear to you. Say the word, and I will do it, right or wrong. And, at any rate, I will say so much, that

my lord is not so crazy as he seems. This is a strange matter, into the tail of which you are unhappily drifted."

"I desire none of your secrets," replied Sir William; "but I will be plain, at the risk of incivility, and confess

"I have not asked either for your censure or your praise, sir," returned Sir William. "I desire simply to be quit

of you; and to that effect, I put a boat and complement of men at your disposal."

"This is fairly offered," said I, after reflection. "But you must suffer me to say a word upon the other side. We

have a natural curiosity to learn the truth of this affair; I have some of it myself; my lord (it is very plain) has

"I think so myself," Sir William interrupted, "and I propose (since I go in that direction) to probe it to the

bottom. Whether or not the man has gone like a dog to die upon his master's grave, his life, at least, is in great

danger, and I propose, if I can, to save it. There is nothing against his character?"

"And the other?" he said. "I have heard my lord, of course; but, from the circumstances of his servant's

"You must not ask me that!" I cried. "Hell may have noble flames. I have known him a score of years, and

"I appear to intrude again upon your secrets," said Sir William, "believe me, inadvertently. Enough that I will

see the grave, and (if possible) rescue the Indian. Upon these terms, can you persuade your master to return to

"Sir William," said I, "I will tell you how it is. You do not see my lord to advantage; it will seem even strange

to you that I should love him; but I do, and I am not alone. If he goes back to Albany, it must be by force, and

it will be the deathwarrant of his reason, and perhaps his life. That is my sincere belief; but I am in your

hands, and ready to obey, if you will assume so much responsibility as to command."

"I will have no shred of responsibility; it is my single endeavour to avoid the same," cried Sir William. "You

insist upon following this journey up; and be it so! I wash my hands of the whole matter."

With which word, he turned upon his heel and gave the order to break camp; and my lord, who had been

The situation of the Master's grave was, between guides, easily described; it lay, indeed, beside a chief

landmark of the wilderness, a certain range of peaks, conspicuous by their design and altitude, and the source

of many brawling tributaries to that inland sea, Lake Champlain. It was therefore possible to strike for it

direct, instead of following back the bloodstained trail of the fugitives, and to cover, in some sixteen hours

of march, a distance which their perturbed wanderings had extended over more than sixty. Our boats we left

under a guard upon the river; it was, indeed, probable we should return to find them frozen fast; and the small

equipment with which we set forth upon the expedition, included not only an infinity of furs to protect us

from the cold, but an arsenal of snowshoes to render travel possible, when the inevitable snow should fall.

Considerable alarm was manifested at our departure; the march was conducted with soldierly precaution, the

camp at night sedulously chosen and patrolled; and it was a consideration of this sort that arrested us, the

second day, within not many hundred yards of our destination the night being already imminent, the spot in

which we stood well qualified to be a strong camp for a party of our numbers; and Sir William, therefore, on

Before us was the high range of mountains toward which we had been all day deviously drawing near. From

the first light of the dawn, their silver peaks had been the goal of our advance across a tumbled lowland

forest, thrid with rough streams, and strewn with monstrous boulders; the peaks (as I say) silver, for already

at the higher altitudes the snow fell nightly; but the woods and the low ground only breathed upon with frost.

All day heaven had been charged with ugly vapours, in the which the sun swam and glimmered like a shilling

piece; all day the wind blew on our left cheek barbarous cold, but very pure to breathe. With the end of the

afternoon, however, the wind fell; the clouds, being no longer reinforced, were scattered or drunk up; the sun

set behind us with some wintry splendour, and the white brow of the mountains shared its dying glow.

It was dark ere we had supper; we ate in silence, and the meal was scarce despatched before my lord slunk

from the fireside to the margin of the camp; whither I made haste to follow him. The camp was on high

ground, overlooking a frozen lake, perhaps a mile in its longest measurement; all about us, the forest lay in

heights and hollows; above rose the white mountains; and higher yet, the moon rode in a fair sky. There was

no breath of air; nowhere a twig creaked; and the sounds of our own camp were hushed and swallowed up in

the surrounding stillness. Now that the sun and the wind were both gone down, it appeared almost warm, like

a night of July: a singular illusion of the sense, when earth, air, and water were strained to bursting with the

My lord (or what I still continued to call by his loved name) stood with his elbow in one hand, and his chin

sunk in the other, gazing before him on the surface of the wood. My eyes followed his, and rested almost

pleasantly upon the frosted contexture of the pines, rising in moonlit hillocks, or sinking in the shadow of

small glens. Hard by, I told myself, was the grave of our enemy, now gone where the wicked cease from

troubling, the earth heaped for ever on his once so active limbs. I could not but think of him as somehow

fortunate to be thus done with man's anxiety and weariness, the daily expense of spirit, and that daily river of

circumstance to be swum through, at any hazard, under the penalty of shame or death. I could not but think

how good was the end of that long travel; and with that, my mind swung at a tangent to my lord. For was not

my lord dead also? a maimed soldier, looking vainly for discharge, lingering derided in the line of battle? A

kind man, I remembered him; wise, with a decent pride, a son perhaps too dutiful, a husband only too loving,

one that could suffer and be silent, one whose hand I loved to press. Of a sudden, pity caught in my windpipe

with a sob; I could have wept aloud to remember and behold him; and standing thus by his elbow, under the

broad moon, I prayed fervently either that he should be released, or I strengthened to persist in my affection.

"Oh God," said I, "this was the best man to me and to himself, and now I shrink from him. He did no wrong,

or not till he was broke with sorrows; these are but his honourable wounds that we begin to shrink from. Oh,

I was still so engaged in my own bosom, when a sound broke suddenly upon the night. It was neither very

loud, nor very near; yet, bursting as it did from so profound and so prolonged a silence, it startled the camp

like an alarm of trumpets. Ere I had taken breath, Sir William was beside me, the main part of the voyagers

clustered at his back, intently giving ear. Methought, as I glanced at them across my shoulder, there was a

whiteness, other than moonlight, on their cheeks; and the rays of the moon reflected with a sparkle on the

eyes of some, and the shadows lying black under the brows of others (according as they raised or bowed the

head to listen) gave to the group a strange air of animation and anxiety. My lord was to the front, crouching a

little forth, his hand raised as for silence: a man turned to stone. And still the sounds continued, breathlessly

Suddenly Mountain spoke in a loud, broken whisper, as of a man relieved. "I have it now," he said; and, as

we all turned to hear him, "the Indian must have known the cache," he added. "That is he he is digging out

"Why, to be sure!" exclaimed Sir William. "We were geese not to have supposed so much."

"The only thing is," Mountain resumed, "the sound is very close to our old camp. And, again, I do not see

"Greed and fear are wings," remarked Sir William. "But this rogue has given us an alert, and I have a notion

to return the compliment. What say you, gentlemen, shall we have a moonlight hunt?"

It was so agreed; dispositions were made to surround Secundra at his task; some of Sir William's Indians

hastened in advance; and a strong guard being left at our headquarters, we set forth along the uneven bottom

of the forest; frost crackling, ice sometimes loudly splitting under foot; and overhead the blackness of

pinewoods, and the broken brightness of the moon. Our way led down into a hollow of the land; and as we

descended, the sounds diminished and had almost died away. Upon the other slope it was more open, only

dotted with a few pines, and several vast and scattered rocks that made inky shadows in the moonlight. Here

the sounds began to reach us more distinctly; we could now perceive the ring of iron, and more exactly

estimate the furious degree of haste with which the digger plied his instrument. As we neared the top of the

ascent, a bird or two winged aloft and hovered darkly in the moonlight; and the next moment we were gazing

A narrow plateau, overlooked by the white mountains, and encompassed nearer hand by woods, lay bare to

the strong radiance of the moon. Rough goods, such as make the wealth of foresters, were sprinkled here and

there upon the ground in meaningless disarray. About the midst, a tent stood, silvered with frost: the door

open, gaping on the black interior. At the one end of this small stage lay what seemed the tattered remnants of

a man. Without doubt we had arrived upon the scene of Harris's encampment; there were the goods scattered

in the panic of flight; it was in yon tent the Master breathed his last; and the frozen carrion that lay before us

was the body of the drunken shoemaker. It was always moving to come upon the theatre of any tragic

incident; to come upon it after so many days, and to find it (in the seclusion of a desert) still unchanged, must

have impressed the mind of the most careless. And yet it was not that which struck us into pillars of stone;

but the sight (which yet we had been half expecting) of Secundra ankle deep in the grave of his late master.

He had cast the main part of his raiment by, yet his frail arms and shoulders glistered in the moonlight with a

copious sweat; his face was contracted with anxiety and expectation; his blows resounded on the grave, as

thick as sobs; and behind him, strangely deformed and inkblack upon the frosty ground, the creature's

shadow repeated and parodied his swift gesticulations. Some night birds arose from the boughs upon our

coming, and then settled back; but Secundra, absorbed in his toil; heard or heeded not at all.

I heard Mountain whisper to Sir William, "Good God! it's the grave! He's digging him up!" It was what we

had all guessed, and yet to hear it put in language thrilled me. Sir William violently started.

Secundra leaped in the air, a little breathless cry escaped him, the tool flew from his grasp, and he stood one

instant staring at the speaker. The next, swift as an arrow, he sped for the woods upon the farther side; and the

next again, throwing up his hands with a violent gesture of resolution, he had begun already to retrace his

"Well, then, you come, you help " he was saying. But by now my lord had stepped beside Sir William; the

moon shone fair upon his face, and the words were still upon Secundra's lips, when he beheld and recognised

his master's enemy. "Him!" he screamed, clasping his hands, and shrinking on himself.

"Come, come!" said Sir William. "There is none here to do you harm, if you be innocent; and if you be

guilty, your escape is quite cut off. Speak, what do you here among the graves of the dead and the remains of

"I will see you safe, if you be innocent," returned Sir William. "I have said the thing, and I see not wherefore

"There all murderers," cried Secundra, "that is why! He kill murderer," pointing to Mountain; "there two

hiremurderers," pointing to my lord and myself "all gallows murderers! Ah! I see you all swing in a

rope. Now I go save the sahib; he see you swing in a rope. The sahib," he continued, pointing to the grave,

My lord uttered a little noise, moved nearer to the grave, and stood and stared in it.

"See, sahib," said Secundra. "The sahib and I alone with murderers; try all way to escape, no way good. Then

try this way: good way in warm climate, good way in India; here, in this dam cold place, who can tell? I tell

"I tell you I bury him alive," said Secundra. "I teach him swallow his tongue. Now dig him up pretty good

Sir William turned to the nearest of his men. "Light a fire," said he. "My lot seems to be cast with the insane."

He returned as he spoke to the grave, and resumed his former toil. My lord stood rooted, and I at my lord's

The frost was not yet very deep, and presently the Indian threw aside his tool, and began to scoop the dirt by

handfuls. Then he disengaged a corner of a buffalo robe; and then I saw hair catch among his fingers: yet, a

moment more, and the moon shone on something white. Awhile Secundra crouched upon his knees, scraping

with delicate fingers, breathing with puffed lips; and when he moved aside, I beheld the face of the Master

wholly disengaged. It was deadly white, the eyes closed, the ears and nostrils plugged, the cheeks fallen, the

nose sharp as if in death; but for all he had lain so many days under the sod, corruption had not approached

him, and (what strangely affected all of us) his lips and chin were mantled with a swarthy beard.

"They say hair grows upon the dead," observed Sir William; but his voice was thick and weak.

Secundra paid no heed to our remarks, digging swift as a terrier in the loose earth. Every moment the form of

the Master, swathed in his buffalo robe, grew more distinct in the bottom of that shallow trough; the moon

shining strong, and the shadows of the standers by, as they drew forward and back, falling and flitting over

his emergent countenance. The sight held us with a horror not before experienced. I dared not look my lord in

the face; but for as long as it lasted, I never observed him to draw breath; and a little in the background one of

Of the flight of time, I have no idea; it may have been three hours, and it may have been five, that the Indian

laboured to reanimate his master's body. One thing only I know, that it was still night, and the moon was not

yet set, although it had sunk low, and now barred the plateau with long shadows, when Secundra uttered a

small cry of satisfaction; and, leaning swiftly forth, I thought I could myself perceive a change upon that icy

countenance of the unburied. The next moment I beheld his eyelids flutter; the next they rose entirely, and the

So much display of life I can myself swear to. I have heard from others that he visibly strove to speak, that

his teeth showed in his beard, and that his brow was contorted as with an agony of pain and effort. And this

may have been; I know not, I was otherwise engaged. For at that first disclosure of the dead man's eyes, my

Day came, and still Secundra could not be persuaded to desist from his unavailing efforts. Sir William,

leaving a small party under my command, proceeded on his embassy with the first light; and still the Indian

rubbed the limbs and breathed in the mouth of the dead body. You would think such labours might have

vitalised a stone; but, except for that one moment (which was my lord's death), the black spirit of the Master

held aloof from its discarded clay; and by about the hour of noon, even the faithful servant was at length

"Too cold," said he, "good way in India, no good here." And, asking for some food, which he ravenously

devoured as soon as it was set before him, he drew near to the fire and took his place at my elbow. In the

same spot, as soon as he had eaten, he stretched himself out, and fell into a childlike slumber, from which I

must arouse him, some hours afterwards, to take his part as one of the mourners at the double funeral. It was

the same throughout; he seemed to have outlived at once and with the same effort, his grief for his master and

One of the men left with me was skilled in stonecutting; and before Sir William returned to pick us up, I had

chiselled on a boulder this inscription, with a copy of which I may fitly bring my narrative to a close:

(2) "NOTE BY MR. MACKELLAR. Should not this be Alan BRECK Stewart, afterwards notorious as the

(3) NOTE BY MR. MACKELLAR. This Teach of the SARAH must not be confused with the celebrated

Blackbeard. The dates and facts by no means tally. It is possible the second Teach may have at once

borrowed the name and imitated the more excessive part of his manners from the first. Even the Master of

(4) NOTE BY MR. MACKELLAR. And is not this the whole explanation? since this Dutton, exactly like the

(5) NOTE BY MR. MACKELLAR: A complete blunder: there was at this date no word of the marriage: see